


i just wanna dance with you

by still_i_fall



Series: one single thread of gold (tied me to you) [1]
Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, a lil bit tessa virtue scott moir, and a lil bit spinning out, it's almost painful, like a mix of both, more specifically - Freeform, or acquaintances, or ig an ice dance au, skating au, so much mutual pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 58,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall
Summary: But somehow, she associates the snow with him. When she sees it in the morning, in the parking lot of the rink, filtered through the streetlamps, the first person that comes to mind is Harry Bingham.-or harry and allie and the ice dance au that absolutely no one asked for
Relationships: Elle Tomkins/Helena Wu (background), Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Series: one single thread of gold (tied me to you) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852765
Comments: 76
Kudos: 183





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i tried starting this forever ago after watching spinning out, but just wasn't feeling it. then i changed the font in the doc and wrote about ten thousand words in a few days and here it is. 
> 
> this right here is also the reason why the last chapter of the bon appetit au is not out. oops. 
> 
> disclaimer: i know very little about ice dance. everything in this fic is either based on spinning out or tessa virtue and scott moir (olympic ice dancers who i was lowkey obsessed with during the winter olympics way back in 2018). bits of the first chapter of this fic is also pretty heavily inspired by an old vm fic. 
> 
> i hope you guys enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> title is from the lana del rey song 'happiness is a butterfly' and a big thanks to [grizzs-bun](https://grizzs-bun.tumblr.com/) for giving this a quick once over for me! it meant a lot!

**PART ONE. (the start)**

  
  


-

  
  


**before.**

  
  


-

  
  


They were both eight. 

Her mom doesn’t tell the story anymore, hasn’t in years, but Allie remembers bits of it faintly. She remembers that they were both eight. She remembers that they were tiny back then, the youngest in the entire competition. She remembers that they could barely see over the boards, that they felt like tiny little specks on the ice. 

She remembers that it was the middle of winter, snow falling fast outside, piling up high, and that the snowflakes caught in her hair and melted too fast. She remembers that she wasn’t allowed to stand in it. She remembers that they had to leave.

They were both eight and Allie remembers being so nervous that it had hurt. She remembers him being nervous too, quiet and shaking. She remembers that crease between his brows forming. She remembers holding his hand, later though, later, when it was over.

She doesn’t remember much from that day, but, looking back, she thinks that the ice must have been cold against her skin, that the fluorescents above must have been too bright, and the people too loud. 

No, her mom doesn’t tell the story anymore, doesn’t like how it sounds against everything else, but here’s how it goes: Cassandra collapses mid skate, eyes closed, head first onto the ice, and Harry steps back like he’s afraid he’ll go down with her. Allie screams, and their moms stop whispering about how Harry and Cassandra _could really be something._

They were both eight, and Allie was seven, and Cassandra never skated competitively again.

  
  


-

  
  


**i.**

  
  


-

  
  


Will won’t look her in the eye. 

There’s a spot, one just above her left shoulder, close to the boards and the sound of Kelly Aldrich’s laughter, that his eyes keep falling on. It’s familiar to her now, the feeling of Will’s focus shifting farther and farther away. 

Her aunt Lynette, her coach, doesn’t say anything, not this time and not the last time either. Two minutes later, when their ice time is up, Allie lets Will cut in front of her on his way over to the edge of the boards. Kelly Alrdich is still laughing.

Sometimes, Allie wonders if Will really wants to be her partner. It’s when it’s dark, when it’s quiet only because it’s late and Allie is counting the hours of sleep she’ll get if she _falls asleep right now and gets up at five for practice._ It’s when he doesn’t talk to her after the music stops, or how he seems to look everywhere but her eyes. 

Skating is her entire life, so Will should be too. Will and skating should be so deeply intertwined that she can’t imagine one without the other. Should should _should._

She was twelve when they met, and twelve still when he became her best friend. And she was thirteen, nearly fourteen—nearly old enough for her parents to let her leave home for Canton to try this figure skating thing out for real—when he took her hand and danced her around the rink and asked her to skate with him. 

And then she was fourteen, too young to be making any real decisions, but still picking ice dance with Will over an entire future that was just beginning to lay itself out for her.

But it’s been two years, only two years, and Allie wonders in the quiet moments if Will really wants to be her partner anymore. 

When it’s bright out again, though, when there are fluorescents overhead and a buzzing in her ears, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, the feeling will go away. (Then she catches herself staring across the rink. She catches her eyes drifting, drifting to a mess of dark brown curls, and suddenly she’s just as bad as he is.)

  
  


-

  
  


Allie met Harry Bingham the same day Cassandra did. It was early in the morning, and she was four and now, when she looks back, all she can remember from that moment is the vague outline of wild hair and a smile so bright and wide and carefree that it really can’t be anyone else’s.

After Cass’s heart failed her, while she was lying in a white hospital bed, there was discussion over whether or not Allie would take her place. It was almost her, her hands held tight in Harry’s, his eyes on her. She doesn’t remember the discussions. Harry says he does, quietly while Kelly talks with Will. 

"It really was almost you," he says, over and over, too earnest, too wistful. Always too wistful. 

Because Harry was nine and she was eight, and he wanted a break, and she wanted a future that she could almost see that didn’t involve _anyone else._ After that, Harry went through four partners in five seasons before settling on Kelly. Perfect, beautiful, graceful Kelly. Allie was there when he met her. She likes to think that she knew that Kelly was it before Harry did, by the way they skated mostly, but also by the way he looked at her, like she could be his whole world. Harry didn’t skate—didn't look—like that with anyone else. 

(Sometimes, and only sometimes, Allie wonders what it’d be like, skating with Harry.)

She remembers how a week later, a week after Harry met Kelly, a week after Harry decided on Kelly, Will came to her with a proposal, with a question. Now, now while she lays in bed and it’s quiet, almost silent, she thinks that maybe she wouldn’t have said yes if it wasn’t for Kelly appearing. 

God, isn’t that stupid?

None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that it was cold the first time she met Harry, her breath coming out in puffs. Every important moment in her life has happened while it was cold; watching Cass fall, dancing with Will, meeting Harry. It’s always snowy and frosty and tainted the lightest pastel blue.

But, somehow, she associates the snow with him. When she sees it in the morning, in the parking lot of the rink, filtered through the streetlamps, the first person that comes to mind is Harry Bingham. 

God, that _is_ stupid. 

Because they’re not even proper friends. No, not anymore, maybe not ever. She has his number, but she doesn’t text him. They don’t hang out away from the rink. She’s never eaten a meal alone with him, unless vending machine snacks, candy bars and stale chips count. 

But sometimes, usually while it’s snowing and cold enough that the air feels blue, when she sees him on the ice, she thinks that that’s a whole world that could’ve been.

  
  


-

  
  


“Tell your partner to stop staring at mine.”

Harry appears behind her suddenly. It’s always sudden with him; she never sees him coming. Maybe it’s because he shouldn’t even be in the kitchenette right now; his ice time is starting soon. His name is right below hers on the schedule. They’re part of the same ice rink group text. She knows his training times just as well as he must know hers. 

He’s got to know them, there’s got to be a reason why he’s early on Tuesdays, why on Thursdays he spends extra time near the changing rooms, why he’s always there, peeling an orange in the kitchenette on Sundays when she gets an extra fifteen minute break between sessions. He knows her schedule just as well as she knows his and she’s near sure of that.

“Tell your partner to stop laughing so loud. It’s distracting,” she bites back, too breathy to really be biting. 

Harry snorts, smiling at her all bright and loud. His hair is just a little rumpled. She looks down to try to avoid his gaze. The lineloem is shiny. His sneakers, fancy, expensive looking ones, are just barely tied.

“How are you, Pressman?” he asks, stepping closer to her, close enough that she can smell his cologne, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. When it’s just the two of them, he always focuses on her. She hates how his voice sounds almost husky. She hates how she doesn’t want to step back when he moves closer to her. 

She feels guilty when they talk. She feels hidden, like they can only interact in the dark corners of the rink, in the places where no one will see them. She feels guilty when he pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, guilty when his fingers rub smooth circles into her wrist. She feels like she’s stealing something from Kelly, like she’s hiding something from Will. 

She only really talks to Harry on the quiet days, the days when Will won’t look her in the eye, on the days when she wants to feel better about herself. Harry’s her rival, but, on those days, that doesn’t matter. She can forget that Harry’s her rival, that he has his own skating partner who he looks at like she’s his entire world. Allie can forget that all she really is in his eyes is a competitor, the younger sister of his former partner. He only talks to Allie in the dark, forgotten corners.

But, fuck, she doesn’t care. She feels guilty, but she doesn’t care.

So she tilts her head back. She stares up at him and blinks just once when the fluorescents above them shine into the corners of her eyes. “I’m good, Bingham.”

Harry smirks at her. All he can ever seem to do sometimes is smirk. She hates that too. “Good.” They stare at one another. Allie picks out the flecks in his eyes. She hates how hard he focuses on her. She hates how easy he makes it seem. “My ice time is starting,” he tells her. She nods.

He brushes past her on his way out. Allie grabs an orange from the bowl that sits in the middle of the table off to the side in the too small kitchenette. She counts to three before following him.

  
  


-

  
  


A list of things she likes about skating with Will (in no particular order).

How in sync they are. While they skate, it’s sometimes like they’re a single person rather than a pair. Sometimes it’s like he knows what she’s going to do before she does it. Besides maybe Cassandra, Allie doesn’t think there's a single person in the world who knows her better than he does. 

The costumes. She likes to feel pretty. She likes the short dresses that twirl just right, the pastels and jewel tones. She likes the idea of dressing up for something, like somehow that makes it more important. She likes to feel important too. 

The music. It’s loud on the rink, sweeping and grand. It pulls her in everytime. She’ll listen to it off the ice, over and over until it’s all she hears. It’s constant and comforting. The music becomes the soundtrack to her life.

Not being alone. She was an individual skater up until she was just barely fourteen. Looking back, it was lonely, lonelier than she’d care to admit. It’s nice to have someone else who is there. It’s nice to be able to share the burden. It’s better somehow, winning as a team versus winning alone. She’s not sure how.

Winning. Standing on the podium, she feels like she’s actually done something. She feels accomplished and powerful and not like she’s wasting her life on the ice. She thinks then, on the podium, under the harsh lights in the cold rink, that maybe there’s a future here, maybe it’s all worth it.

The future. Sometimes it feels like it’s all coming together, like the Olympics are real and tangible and a goal that’s not insane. She likes thinking about that, how sure the _maybe_ she tells herself in the middle of the night is starting to become. She’ll close her eyes and see the Olympic rings, so clear and bright and real that for a second she really thinks they can actually do it.

Allie tries to remember this list in the too quiet moments. She tries to remember it when Will’s looking right past her, when Harry’s standing too close, when she feels herself drifting. She tries to think of this list while her Aunt tells her that the next step is training in Canton, far away from home, while she’s driving home in the dark from a practice that’d gone late. While she’s standing in the dark corners. While she can’t sleep.

She tries to remember that she _likes_ skating with Will, that there’s no point in wondering what it’d be like if things were just a little bit different.

  
  


-

  
  


Allie falls at a competition in Canada and they place fourth. 

Harry and Kelly leave with gold medals around their necks. 

  
  


-

  
  


Her cousins hate skating. 

Allie doesn’t understand it, how two people with parents who seem to never leave the ice can hate it so much.

They’re both good at it too. If Sam wasn’t deaf, if he hadn’t lost his hearing as a child, Allie knows that Lynette would’ve forced him to stick with it. He’s good, when she forces him into the ice, graceful and light. It’s easy for Allie to imagine a world in which her cousin is more than just good, maybe even the best, a world where a gold medal is placed around his neck under those Olympic rings. 

She likes to do that, think about what-ifs. 

Allie’s never seen Campbell skate. She wouldn’t trust him on the ice. She doesn’t trust him off the ice either. 

Together, her aunt and uncle make up the best pairs ice dance coaching team in Connecticut. When people ask why she switched events at fourteen, why she let go of individual skating, she mentions them. She doesn’t mention Will.

God, she’d been so young, too young to be making a choice like that. She’d been stupid to think that Will could ever be someone she’d love, someone who’d care enough about her—care enough about all of this—to want it all in the same way she does. 

And here's a bit of a secret, something she'd never admit to anyone, she thought about kissing Will once, in that time between slipping on skate guards and sitting in the kiss and cry, while they walked towards the couches and waited for results. Will’s arm was around her shoulders and they were in Nice and she thought about how _easy_ it would be, turning and leaning and pressing her lips to his. How easy it would be to make Will her everything. 

She didn't kiss him, obviously, because she's Allie and he's Will and that would never work. She's known that for forever.

Maybe she hates skating now too. Maybe she understands how her cousins feel, how the ice is too cold and her dreams don’t seem like they’ll ever stop feeling like dreams. 

-

"That the last orange?"

Harry's slipped into the kitchenette. Will's still on the ice, probably spending his break talking to Kelly. Allie saw her arrive about twenty minutes ago, early by a half hour for her training session. Harry's still got his scarf on, snowflakes melting into his hair.

"Yep," Allie says, tossing the peel in the trash. "You want half?"

She can hear the florescents humming above them, buzzing. She wonders when they'd last been replaced. There's one at the edge of the girls changing room that will flicker every once in a while. It's been doing that for as long as she can remember. Maybe it will never stop, maybe it'll still be flickering long after she's left this place.

Harry nods, sitting down across from her. "Sure."

She pauses, tears the orange in half, pushing it across the table on a paper napkin. "So you're with Lynette for the next session?"

He stares over at her, curiously. They don't talk about training. Ever. They talk around it, talk about Will and Kelly, about the weather at different competitions, about that one costume they'd thought was _so funny_ that the Canadians had worn. They don't talk about training.

"Yeah," he finally says. "So you're with Doug then?"

She nods. "Yep."

Harry stands, a quarter of the orange still left on the napkin. He's checking the fancy watch on his wrist. God, she wonders how much that thing cost. Too much, probably. Everything about Harry is _too much._ "I should probably get going, Pressman."

"Yeah."

She hates how her eyes follow him as he leaves the room. She hates how much she wishes he had stayed.

  
  


-

  
  


They beat Harry and Kelly by two full points in Lake Placid. It’s not how things are supposed to go. 

It’s been over two years since this started. Two years. This is their first time beating Harry and Kelly.

God, it feels good, standing above them on the podium, the gold around their necks. It feels good when Harry won’t look her in the eye, when Kelly mumbles a soft “congratulations,” when Will grins at her, swings her around and around in the air. 

“There’s a party,” he tells her, flushed and happy and bright. “In some Canadian figure skater’s room. You wanna go with me?” Yes, that’s exactly what she wants. She wants Will to pull her away to some party full of people they barely know. She wants to dance and drink cheap beer that she’s too young to drink. She wants to take a deep breath and be hungover on the flight home. 

She wants it so much. 

Only Cassandra’s here, somewhere in the crowd, maybe rushing to the back. She wants to see Cassandra, for Cass to tell her what a good job she did, for Cass to shit on Harry. 

Cassandra hates Harry. Allie can’t remember a time when they weren’t at each other's throats. Even at eight, when she collapsed mid skate, when it was snowing outside and Harry grabbed Allie’s hand, Cassandra hated him. Allie’s pretty sure Harry hates her too. Their mom’s thought it was funny, something they could grow out of. Allie imagines a different world where gold medals hang around their necks and they get into vicious fights on the ice. 

No, don’t listen to Allie’s mom. They never would’ve worked.

Allie thinks that the only reason why they ever even skated together was purely competitive. They both like being the best so fucking much and, yeah, they definitely could’ve been the best, but god, they would’ve killed each other long before ever getting anywhere.

Will walks away, grinning back at her once before disappearing into the changing rooms. Allie watches him leave, watches him bounce on the balls of his feet up and down, watches how he holds one strap of his sports bag close to his chest, her eyes lingering on the door for a second too long as it swings shut.

From her own sports bag, she pulls out her phone, moving to text Cassandra _where are you?_ and tapping the screen twice when it starts to go black. 

And then Harry Bingham’s there, sudden, like always, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her next to him into a seat. He’s not wearing the silver around his neck anymore. Allie can’t say she doesn’t miss it.

“Good skate,” he tells her, scooting just a little too close. Her phone screen is black now. She makes no move to turn it back on. 

“Thanks.”

Sometimes, she wishes that they weren’t competitors. She wishes that she’d stuck with individual skating just so she could look at him and say _nice job_ without it sounding insincere.

“Where’s Kelly?” she asks because that’s where he should be, somewhere with Kelly. Allie wonders if they’re dating, if they’d risk it like that. She thinks that maybe she would, if it was that or nothing. Yeah, she thinks that she would. 

Harry swallows. “Don’t know.” He’s too quiet, too small, too dim. He’s not being what she needs him to be, not being loud and bright and happy. She thinks back to the medal ceremony, to Kelly and Harry parting immediately.

He’s staring down at his feet and she’s staring at him. It feels like a much needed change of pace. “I think silver suits your complexion better than gold,” she says after a moment. 

He smiles softly and her breath catches in her throat. “Yeah?” 

She nods. “Yeah. I guess you’re just going to have to learn to not go for first.”

“If you say so, Pressman.”

He’s the only person who calls her _Pressman._ It started when she was thirteen and sometimes she wonders if he even remembers her name. Sometimes she wonders what it means, him calling her Pressman when everyone else calls her Allie. Sometimes she wonders why it makes her stomach flutter as much as it does.

(Because she has Will, sweet, kind, wonderful Will and she really shouldn’t be thinking so much about Harry Bingham.)

Her phone screen lights up with Cassandra’s name. Harry’s gaze shifts and Allie move’s quickly to answer, like Cass and Harry still need to be kept in two very separate spheres.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Cassandra answers, bright and a little distorted. The sound feels fuzzy and Allie shifts sharply away from Harry as if that’ll help. “Nice job!”

“Thanks. Ummm...” Allie stands, making too direct eye contact with Harry. He nods her away slowly and she nods back. Somewhere in her bag is a gold medal that she thinks he wants. It feels like it’s weighing her down. She almost wants to give it to him. 

She lied earlier; gold, silver, bronze, doesn’t matter. Harry always looks good.

She turns away from him, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before asking her sister, “Where are you?” Allie doesn’t turn around as she walks away, but swears she feels his gaze follow her. 

She almost wishes she’d stayed. Almost.

  
  


-

  
  


Cassandra had told her not to skate with Will, and Allie hadn’t listened.

As horrible as this sounds, sometimes Allie’s glad Cassandra’s heart failed her, because there’s no way to know how good she could’ve gotten, there’s no point to comparison. Cass stopped when she was eight; ice dance never became her entire life.

In New York, in the parking lot of the rink in Lake Placid, the air is cold, cold enough to leave the tip of Cassandra’s nose a bright pink. 

“So what’s next?” Cass asks softly, grabbing Allie’s hand as they walk towards her car. Cassandra drove here, all the way from West Ham, nearly five hours. Tomorrow night, she’ll drive back.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean do you want to stick with this, all the way through, move up to the senior level and move to Canton and really go for this or what?”

Allie swallows, shifts her bag on her shoulder and tilts her head back just a little so she can see the sky. It’s clear, speckled with stars. She wishes it was snowing. “Canton,” she finally answers. “I wanna win gold at the Olympics. I wanna be the best.” 

Cassandra nods, like she gets it, like she wasn’t forced to quit as a child. Allie wonders if Cass ever thinks about what could’ve been. Probably not. That doesn’t sound like her sister.

  
  


-

  
  


It’s snowing in Greenwich, big flakes that get stuck on her windshield as she pulls into the parking lot.

Her favorite season is winter. It makes sense, when you put it in terms of her life. Everything fits. Her favorite season is winter, her entire life is ice skating.

When it’s cold, really cold, winter at its worst, a pond a little over a half mile from her house will freeze over solid enough to hold weight. She’s never skated on it, no, when she was younger, Cass would tell her it was too dangerous. Now, now the ice seems like it’d be too rough beneath her skates. Now there’s too much to lose; an entire future.

And it’s only in winter that her mom likes to tell her that she skated before she ever walked, that she was on ice from the very start. It’s only in winter that her mom likes to walk past outdoor skating rinks and point to them saying _that’s where it all started_ like Allie’s accomplished something big already. She hasn’t. 

It’s in the middle of winter and she’s sixteen and when her mom points at ice skating rinks, Allie wants a gold medal to hang from her neck so badly it hurts. 

That’s why it’s six a.m. and she’s outside the rink. Why it’s still dark out, the streetlights on and the roads empty. It’s snowing, of course, little flurries that catch in your eyelashes, that melt in your hair. She’s in no rush getting from her car to the door, Will’s just texted her that he’ll be late, that he only just woke up and forgot something at someone’s house and a million other excuses that she doesn’t care to read. The important part is that he’ll be at least an hour late. There’s no point in going home now though, so she takes her time approaching the building, tilting her head back to look up at the sky just once, only once letting the snowflakes fall onto her eyes.

Near the door, while she’s reaching for the handle, preparing for the too cold metal against her hand, taking the smallest step forward, she lands on a patch of ice, her feet slipping out from under her. And then he’s there, God, he’s always there, like he’s waiting to catch her. 

Harry’s already too close, steadying her with a firm grip. When she looks up, tilts her back just a little, she sees the snowflakes that have caught in his hair. She wonders how she didn’t notice that stupid Maserati that he always drives in the parking lot, how in her own world she must’ve been. 

“You good, Pressman?” he asks, his fingers still wrapped around her wrist. He’s smiling at her, his head just barely angled down.

She tugs her wrist from his grasp, smiling too, just a little, and stepping back to pull open the door. Harry catches it, holding it open above her head. “I’m fine, Bingham. Thanks for catching me.”

Behind them, the door swings shut. He shrugs, too casual. Too carefree. It’s six a.m. and she’s trying very hard to remember his schedule, the rink group text with the names and times and promises for empty ice. 

He’s keeping in stride with her as she walks past the empty front desk and moves toward the changing rooms. “Can’t have people thinking I’m trying to take out my competition.”

She shifts her sports bag on her shoulder, feels her skates press up against her side. “What are you doing here? It’s six in the morning. I didn’t realise you got up this early.”

He smiles at her again and she feels herself slowing to barely a crawl as they approach the changing rooms. He’s still next to her. “Sarah wanted to come in early to practice. I said I’d take her. Forgot my phone in the car, though, and had to go back for it.” He holds up his phone, shaking it a little like he’s trying to prove something. 

Allie turns towards the ice, imagining the sound of skates against the ice as she watches as little Sarah Bingham flies around the rink. Allie thinks about being eight, tiny and so incredibly sure that dreams, no matter how big, are possible. God, she’d give anything to be eight again. 

“What are you doing here?” Harry asks. They’re outside the changing rooms now. Allie makes no move to head inside. She returns her gaze to him, forcing herself to focus on him and only him as if it’s practice for when it’s her and Will on the ice. 

“Wanted to get in an early practice.” 

“Where’s Will?” He sounds too curious. She shifts her sports bag again. Reaches for her phone. 

“He woke up late I guess. Won’t be here for a little while,” she answers, trying not to sound upset. It’s not like she didn’t remind Will last night, or like it was easy for her to get up early and drive all the way to the rink. No, she fucking hates being up before the sun, but here she is. “Maybe it’ll be nice to be alone on the ice for a change.”

“Weren’t you a figure skater before?” he asks. There’s something in his tone that suggests he already knows the answer, that he’s just reminding her that he remembers. There’s the tiniest of butterflies in her stomach.

“Yeah.”

Harry pauses, biting down on the inside of his lip before asking, “You wanna skate with me for a little while, just until Will gets here?” he asks quietly, almost nervously. He’s got nothing to lose; she wonders why he’s nervous. She’s not used to him being nervous, at least not outwardly. Sometimes, at competitions at least, it’s like he’s never nervous. God, it pisses her off. 

“You have your skates?” she asks after a moment, because she just can’t help herself. Will won’t be here for another hour. What does _she_ have to lose?

He nods, a smile forming on his face that she’s quick to mirror. “Meet me out there?”

She swallows, breathless, wishing that she’d thought this through just a little bit more. She still replies with a quick, “sure,” like it’s nothing. 

In the changing room, while she slips on her skates and pulls the laces tight, she tries very hard not to think about what a bad idea this is. He’s the competition. He’s her rival.

But she’s never skated with Harry, no, not even when they were little, not after Cass collapsed on the ice and Harry was looking for a new partner, not before that either, when they were tiny and it would’ve been so easy. No, she’s never skated with him. Just the idea of skating with Harry feels like one big _what-if,_ like it’s some alternate universe where everything was just a little different. 

He’s already on the ice waiting for her when she comes out. His sister is off to the side, a water bottle in hand. Allie waves and Sarah waves back. 

“You ready for this, Bingham?” Allie calls out, and Harry grins back at her, loud and bright and almost comforting in how familiar it feels; she’s seen that grin a million times on the ice before, now’s no different. 

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he jokes, skating towards her in long strides, stopping just a little too close. 

That feels familiar too. 

He reaches for her hand, grabbing it as it leaves her side, pulling her along beside him as they glide around the rink. He spins her as they near the boards and she laughs, feeling bright and loud and happy. Sometimes she forgets that she’s supposed to feel happy on the ice, sometimes that gets lost in the training and the long days and the sore body.

Somewhere behind them, a waltz is played, so soft that she wonders if it’s just in her head. She smiles up at him, her hand still in his as he moves to grasp her waist. He stares right at her and she lets her eyes settle on his, picking out the flecks in the brown. She lets herself fall into it, lets herself forget that Worlds is in two weeks and he’s her biggest rival. She forgets that they both have partners, that this is fake, nothing. 

It feels different, skating with him rather than Will. His grasp feels more firm, his focus almost too sharp, his smile bigger. 

She wishes it felt worse. 

  
  


-

  
  


A list of things she does not like about skating with Will.

How in sync they are. He always knows what she’s going to say and he always beats her to it. In conversations, he won’t let her get a word out. He takes over. Will thinks he knows better, thinks that he’s the better half of the partnership. She’s struggling now to think of one person who really knows her.

The costumes. They’re uncomfortable and expensive. Her mom complains every season about the costumes she has to buy. Allie wears them for a year, only at competitions. Sometimes, she swears she hears Cassandra mumbling about how wasteful it all is. They make her feel like a child playing dress up, like that’s all she’ll ever do-- pretend.

The music. It’s too loud on the rink. Before practice, she’ll take two ibuprofen and wait for the noise in her head to die down. She hates how it’s the only thing she can listen to for months, how that’s the only way to drill it into her mind. She gets sick of it, of the grandeur and familiarness. God, she hates the repeat button. She just wants to listen to something normal. She wants to have a choice.

Not being alone. It’s not just her; there’s a whole other person dependent on her performance. And she hates depending on him, waiting for his focus to drift back in her directions, waiting for him to take it as serious as her. She gave up everything for him, an entire future, and now it feels like it’s all slipping away.

Losing. The number two beside their names. Standing at the bottom of the podium, so low that they’re practically on the ground. She hates looking up, looking up and seeing him, smug and waving, the way he says _good skate_ when it’s over, when there’s a medal other than gold resting against her chest.

The future. Sometimes she feels like her dreams will only ever be dreams, like the Olympic rings will only appear on her TV screen, and the weight of a gold medal around her neck will only ever be imagined. She hates how impossible it all feels, like she’s wasting her life, like she’s making the wrong choice. 

She tries to forget this list, tries to forget how skating with Harry felt, how light and airy everything was. No, she has a future to focus on, there’s no point in dwelling on things that’ll never be. 

  
  


-

  
  


**before.**

  
  


-

  
  


They were both eight. 

He barely remembers the story now, only the most important parts all filtered in that faded way memories always seem to feel. 

But they were both eight, only barely tall enough to see over the boards, the smallest people in the entire competition, both wanting to win so bad that it hurt. 

And he remembers being nervous, so nervous, shaking before his skate guards were even off. He remembers fighting with Cassandra in the warm-up area over a lift. He remembers how cold the ice felt, colder than the ice in Greenwich, almost as cold as the snow outside. 

He remembers Cassandra falling, watches that part play over and over until all he sees are the little flecks of blood on the ice, until all he hears is Allie’s scream, sharp and loud over everything else. 

He doesn’t like to think about the story now, no, it’s in the past, almost a decade ago, barely anything in the grand scheme of things, but here’s how it goes; Cassandra falls, he steps back like he’s afraid he’ll go down with her, and they get last place in their first competition.

-

**ii.**

  
  


-

  
  


Kelly won’t look him in the eye. 

There’s a spot, just above his left shoulder, close to the edge of the boards, to the way off the ice, where they’re skate guards sit, that her focus keeps falling on. 

He watches it drift.

He remembers meeting Kelly, the sun outside, and clear blue skies that made him long for summer. He likes when the temperatures force the mercury up, likes when he can leave the rink and strip off the sweaters he has to wear on the ice. He likes dipping his feet in the pool, and beach days, and air so warm that your breath catches a little when you step outside. 

It’s been two years and sometimes he wonders if Kelly even wants to be his partner anymore. It’s when it’s dark, when he’s lying in bed, surrounded by the dark blue comforter his mom picked out for him out of a catalogue. It’s during the late night drives home, after Kelly showed up late to the rink because her ballet lesson went long. It’s when it’s snowing, too big flakes that catch in Allie’s hair and melt as he stares. It’s when Allie tilts her head back and takes his hand and glides around the rink beside him. 

God, that was a mistake.

It’s just that Allie’s there, constantly, always at the rink. It’s just that they’re on the same ice rink group chat and, fuck, he knows her schedule way too well, and sometimes he sees her skating and thinks that that’s a whole world that could’ve been.

And Allie… Harry doesn’t know one person who wants to go to the Olympics as much as her. Not even him, and he dreams in the colors of the rings. She’s just so certain of it.

It’s like when she was eight and he was nine, and their mom’s told them they could skate together, that that could be the next step, and she told him, so clearly, that she wanted to be _the best there ever was._ And it was snowing, snowing when he grabbed her hand, but the sky was a clear blue when he let go, when he let go and told himself that no, no he can’t be the best no matter how hard he tries, but she could. He decided when he was nine that he wasn’t going to hold her back.

And maybe this is wrong, but he never felt like he was going to hold Kelly back. 

Sometimes he thinks that Kelly wants to quit ice dance, that she has a completely different idea of her future. But not him, no, his future is one thing, the Olympics, a gold medal, and the national anthem playing while he stands on the top of the podium in front of an American flag. 

(He decided this when he was fifteen, six years too late.)

  
  


-

  
  


At fifteen and sixteen (but just at the start, though, just as summer fades) he’s near certain that he loves Kelly Aldrich. It’s just so easy.

Nothing was that easy, as easy as thinking he could fall for Kelly, not since he was nine, not since Cassandra collapsed, not since his dad died. No, nothing was as easy as thinking he could ever fall for Kelly.

Skating is everything, so it only makes sense that Kelly is too.

He likes how it feels, after the music stops when everything is still for a moment, when Kelly smiles, wide and bright and loud, the loudest she ever is. He’d kissed her once during one of these moments, right after they’d slipped on their skate guards, while they walked toward the kiss and cry. She’d kissed him back, soft and sweet. 

Kelly tells him that he’s obsessed with skating, that it means too much to him, that it matters more than it should. That it’s unhealthy. He doesn’t care. At sixteen, he kisses her and she kisses him back and it never goes anywhere and she tells him that that’s why. He doesn’t care.

Because back then, he was fifteen, then sixteen, and he liked Kelly because it was easy to like Kelly, because Kelly didn’t come with a million what-ifs and an entire past that no one can ever seem to forget. Kelly is new, brand new, and he likes that.

Only then he’s sixteen, nearly midway through the year, and Kelly’s barely there even when she’s one the ice, and he can’t stop staring at Allie Pressman’s hair.

  
  


-

  
  


“Heard you and Allie skated together yesterday.”

Kelly finds him in the training room, standing next to the barre. She’s leaning against the door frame, changed into a leotard, pale pink and a matching ballet skirt. It looks more _her_ than any ice dance costume. 

Is it bad that he hates that?

At the start, just months after they’d skated together for the first time, Kelly had told him with a soft voice that once upon a time she’d wanted to be a principal dancer for the New York Ballet. It was between sessions, while Allie re-learned the basics of skating somewhere across the rink. It’d made sense then, explained the gracefulness that seemingly came with everything Kelly did. It makes even more sense now.

“I came in early with Sarah and she was there,” he says simply, like it’s nothing, like skating with Allie was nothing. God, he wishes it was nothing; he wishes it was nothing just as much as he wishes Kelly and ballet are nothing.

She approaches him, he can see her in the mirror, the smile on her face as he moves into first position. “How was it, skating with her?”

“Different, I guess.” Which is one way to put it. It’d felt right, light and airy and right in a way he wasn’t ready for. Maybe it was how she spun, how she glided across the ice, in step with him. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, how she tilted her head back just barely to stare up at him. Maybe it was the waltz in the background, just barely loud enough for him to know it was real.

It doesn’t matter now, though. No, it doesn’t matter; it’s over. Now, now he can cross _skating with Allie_ off the list of what-ifs he’ll make sometimes in the dark while surrounded by the familiar blue of his room. 

Kelly moves his arms up higher, corrects his posture. He tries to make eye contact with her, tries to smile, wants to make a joke about all the pink, but she’s avoiding it, too focused on fixing his stance. 

“You’re not bad,” she tells him softly, circling around him slowly, finally allowing herself to stare up at him.

He grins. “High praise coming from you.”

She smiles back, her eyes flitting from his to the ground. She pauses, bites the insides of her lip, her smile fading slowly. “I..” 

“Yeah?” he prompts. She looks nervous, nervous in the one place at the rink where she’s always seemed the most comfortable, where he’s found her a million times over the course of nearly three years. 

She forces the smile back, looks the same as just before a skate, when they glide onto the ice, when her hand is trembling in his, and her stare is always blank. “Forgot what I was going to say.”

“Tell me when you remember?” he asks softly. He feels just as quiet as her now and stupid in his too rigid ballet stance; he was never good at this, not like Kelly who seems breathe ballet, who exudes grace and poise and all of those other adjectives people use. 

Kelly nods, her fingers tapping against the barre once, twice, three times before she swivels around, her pink ballet skirt billowing out around her. It’s not until she’s gone, until her footsteps, soft like everything else about her, disappear down the hallway, that he finally releases the position. And it’s not until he’s left too that he realizes Kelly didn’t even do any training.

  
  


-

  
  


Harry met Allie and Cassandra on the same day. It was early in the morning and he was five and now, when he looks back, all he can remember from the moment is the vague outline of a girl so tiny and wild and bright that it really can’t be anyone else.

His mom still brings up Cassandra sometimes, will ask how she’s doing, ask if Harry remembers what dancing with her felt like. 

He does. He hadn’t felt good.

His mom tells him that they could’ve been _something amazing._ He doesn’t doubt that, but god, he would’ve hated every second of it.

Dancing with Allie felt different. It felt right somehow.

In August, just as summer was coming to an end, Kelly had told him in no uncertain terms that he had a crush on Allie. Back then, back as the sunsets became earlier and earlier, he’d thought it was impossible if only because he barely knew her. But now, now, as the snow falls outside, he realises he was wrong; he knows Allie, he’s known her since he was five and she was four. He knows that her favorite color is a pale blue and that her favorite song is _Just Like Heaven_ by The Cure. He knows that she spends all of fall waiting for the cold and that sometimes she hates skating but still can’t imagine a world without it.

Fuck, he knows her so well.

It doesn’t make sense, how easily he remembers these little things, how much he enjoys the moments he spends in the dark corners of the rink, the times he sits behind her on flights and kicks her seat until she turns around, her throwing clementines at him in the too small kitchenette. It’s how he knows her favorite vending machine snack, the cheeto puffs in the blue bag. How he knows the hydroflask she carries around, the one with the dent in the bottom that she refuses to replace.

He’d wondered what skating with her would feel like too often.

He remembers when Will first came to the rink, it’s been years now, how Allie had looked at him with wide eyes, skated with him so easily, like it was nothing. He thinks now that maybe Kelly would’ve been like the other girls, just another partner that he was done with before the season even ended, if it wasn’t for Will. 

Fuck, isn’t that stupid. 

It doesn’t matter, though. No, none of that matters. The only thing that matters is that it was cold the first time he met Allie, a layer of snow on the ground, everything frozen over. He remembers being ten and her saying, just as the weather turned from crisp to cold, that winter was her favorite season, but god, that doesn’t matter either. 

No, the only thing that matters is that he was five and she was four and that there’s a whole universe out there where it was them right from the start.

  
  


-

  
  


He’s never wanted to go to Estonia in March, but here he is anyway. 

It’s freezing outside, and everyone at the corner store, the one five minutes away from his hotel room, only spoke Estonian, and he’s a sixteen hour flight away from home, and god, none of this was worth it.

(Mostly because Junior Worlds is just about over, and there’s a silver medal around his neck.)

He’s sitting on a chair somewhere in the back. Individual skating titles are being crowned and soon he’ll have to take a shuttle back to the hotel room. It’s dark out by now. He thinks the moon is full tonight, could see it bright and shining the night before from the window in his hotel room. 

He moves to grab his phone from his bag, to text Sarah about how things went, though he’s sure that she’d found some way to stream it, to text Kelly asking where she is, how she is after second place. 

And then Allie Pressman’s there, sudden and bright. There’s no medal around her neck, no bronze because that’s how it’d gone, the first change in standings since Lake Placid. A pair from Russia had won and god he wishes that it’d been Allie and Will on the step above him, that at least then the American flag would hang and the Star Spangled Banner could’ve been played in the background.

“Hey,” she says softly, settingly in beside him. There’s a sports bag around her shoulders. She shifts it to the side as she sits.

“Hey.”

“You really took that thing I said about you and silver to heart, huh?” she comments, nudging him with her elbow. The medal is still around his neck this time. Her eyes flitting to it, once then twice. 

“I’m not sure bronze is your color,” he says, nudging her right back. She smiles, something shining in her eyes that he blames on the fluorescents above.

“I’m not sure it is either.” 

They’re silent for a moment. He pulls the medal off, stuffing it in his bag dramatically. He swears he hears her laugh, light and a little tired. It must be getting late. 

“You leaving soon?” he finally asks, turning back to her. Her hair is down. It was up during her skate, pulled back into some braid. He likes it better down.

She nods. “Yep. Taking the shuttle back. Lynette said it runs every hour or something.”

He bites down on the inside of his lip, “You wanna leave?” She must hear it, what he’s implying; that he leaves with her, that they ride the shuttle back together, walk up to the hotel rooms, the ones next door because they were all booked as a group. 

She must hear it, because she smiles a little, nodding her head. “Sure.”

They stand up in unison, both shifting their bags at the same time, but it’s not until they’re outside, not until the too cold air is just hitting his face, not until she’s gasping, smiling up at the sky, that he realizes how close they are. 

“It’s snowing,” she says in a voice very much full of awe. It’s barely snowing, flurrying, tiny flakes that drift to the ground. It’s just tiny bits of ice falling from the sky, but it’s worth it, standing out in the cold, if only for the look on her face. 

“That it is, Pressman.”

She turns her attention back to him, her head tilted just barely up. She’s smiling, so wide and so bright. Somewhere in the background, the moon sits high in the sky, just barely covered by clouds.

He wants to kiss her. 

He doesn’t, because that’s a bad idea, worse than skating with her, worse than every single time he checked her schedule and showed up early just to talk to her for a few minutes in the kitchenette.

“Sorry about the silver,” she says. 

He shrugs. “Sorry about the bronze.”

She shrugs too. “Doesn’t matter much. We’re moving up to the senior level next year anyway.” She’s right. This is it, this is their last year competing against kids, competing in competitions no one really pays any attention to. It’s the Olympics now, Olympics Olympics Olympics. 

“Canton?” The training center in Michigan. He swears he saw her looking at the website once, at the google search images of the rink and the training room and the cafeteria. 

“Yep. I’m kind of excited.”

“They have automatic doors there. No more cold door handles in the winter.”

She snorts. “I think you’ve told me about that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the shuttle approaching. She follows his gaze and smiles. 

“It’s a little scary,” she says. “Canton. It’s like... it’s real after that. It’s not just some crazy dream.”

“We’ll be away from home,” he adds softly. 

“We’ll practically be adults. In fucking Canton. Michigan. God, we’ll be living in Michigan.”

“Fuck, don’t say it like that, Pressman. You’re making it sound more real,” he jokes. Next to them the bus pulls up to the curb. He lets her board first.

She sets her bag down. “Do you think you’re ready?” 

He pauses. No, the answer to her question is no. He doubts he’ll ever be ready for any of this, ever be ready to come in second, ever be ready for the Senior level. “I don’t know.”

Her lips press together and the bus lurches to a start. They’re sitting next to each other even though the shuttle is empty. They’re close, maybe too close, but she doesn’t move away. He doesn’t either. 

“I don’t think I’m ready,” she admits.

He stares at her. God, it’s like he’s always staring at her. He needs to stop. “Yeah you are. You’ve been ready since you were eight.” 

She smiles, her eyes soft. The bus is just barely lit. It’s still flurrying outside. It’s her favorite weather.

It almost feels like this isn’t real, sitting on the bus here with her. It almost feels like a dream. There’s a whole other universe out there where this is his life. And he shouldn’t say this, no, just mentioning it is a horrible idea, but here he goes anyway. “Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if…” 

She nods as he drifts like she gets it, like she’s wondered too. “Yeah, me too.”

They’re silent. On the shuttle radio, some old pop song is playing. She looks out the window and he stares at her because fuck he really just can’t help it. 

“I think I like Estonia,” Allie tells him after a moment, quiet and soft. “It’s kinda nice here.” 

He agrees.

  
  


-

  
  


It’s the very end of March, practically April, two weeks before they’re set to leave for Michigan, when Kelly asks if they could talk over lunch about something _important._

She picks a cafe two blocks from the rink, tells him that they can go after practice and that she tried to make a reservation but was laughed at. Kelly all but pencils the lunch into his non existent planner; she’s efficient like that, takes charge when she has to. 

And he’s not scared, no, not really. What does he have to be scared of? 

(So much. _She’s injured. She’s dying. She’s quitting. She’s done.)_

Practice is only an hour; Will and Allie are working with Lynette and Doug for the rest of the day to prepare for the switch to Canton. Him and Kelly should probably be doing that too. Practice is only an hour, but it feels like three.

After it’s finally over, they drive to the cafe in seperate cars. Kelly makes a joke about hurting the environment that he laughs at if only because it’s her. They park next to each other. It’s nearly April, but he can still see his breath puffing out in front of him. 

He holds the door to the cafe open for her. He’s shaking just a little bit, but thinks that maybe he can blame the cold. 

They’ve just sat down at some booth way in the back, and Harry hasn’t even had a chance to pick up the menu, when Kelly says, with a level of force that he’s not quite used to, “I’m quitting.”

And god, he was expecting that, he knew it was coming, knew it somewhere too close to the surface, but fuck he wasn’t ready for that at all. She’s quitting; two years down the drain. He has to go to Michigan alone in two weeks now. He has to find a new partner.

He swallows, puts the menu down and tries his hardest to remain calm. Everything feels a little like it’s crashing down around him. Everything feels like it’s going wrong. “Have you been here before?” he jokes half-heartedly and Kelly cracks a small smile. She shakes her head. 

“No, but Will said that the key lime pie is good.” She did not need to bring up Will. That was uncalled for.

“I think I like peach better.”

“Me too.”

They stare at one another. Kelly’s studying him, watching his reaction like she doesn’t know what comes next. God, he doesn’t even know what comes next, is barely handling this. It’s like she’s breaking up with him, like she’s ruining everything which is strange and maybe not entirely true; he’s not sure if he sees her beside him on the podium under the Olympic rings, not sure if he’s seen her for quite some time.

He doesn’t want to admit who he sees standing next to him, who his mind always drifts back to when dreaming of the Olympics.

He’s studying the menu, staring at the hamburger options, at how much it costs to add bacon even though he knows he can’t, knows that he’ll get a salad and a water and then go to work out later, when he finally asks, “Why are you quitting?” with a steady, calm voice that doesn’t feel like his own.

Kelly bites down on the corner of her lip, staring at the table, fidgeting with her menu. She’s nervous, Harry realises, _Kelly is nervous._ “I just… I don’t think I ever liked skating as much as I like ballet; I don’t think I’ve ever liked anything as much as I like ballet. It’s like, I can’t get over it, like no matter how good we do or how many times we win, ballet is always first to me, ballet’s always what I think of when I think of my future.” She pauses, glances up at him, eyes just a little wide. 

“And I wish it wasn’t, and I wish I could be the partner you need because fuck, Harry you deserve someone who wants all of this just as bad as you do.” Kelly takes a deep breath. It’s shaky, just a little bit, like everything’s crashing down for her too.

“I got into the School of American Ballet in New York and I accepted. I leave next week.”

Next week. Seven days. In seven days, Kelly will be on a plane to New York and he’ll be here, trying to decide which of his belongings go with him to Michigan. Everything’s changing so fast and he’s not ready for it. 

He’s always been shit with change. 

But here, here sitting across from Kelly in some corner booth at a near empty cafe, he tries to keep himself steady. “I’ll miss you.”

Only now she’s crying and he’s never seen her cry, not once, not when he dropped her in Nice and they came in third, not when she sprained her ankle their first summer skating together, and never when they won. Never. 

And he’s crying too (only that’s not nearly as rare. He cried in Nice, backstage, in some corner on some bench while a bronze medal rested against his chest. He cried when he sprained his wrist that spring, afraid he’d fucked up their entire season. He cried when they won worlds their first year competing together, back in his hotel room, holding the gold in his hands and wondering if they could really go all the way).

After a moment, after Kelly’s dried her tears and after her cheeks have faded to only a dull pink, she tells him, “One day I’m gonna turn on the TV and watch you win gold at the Olympics.”

He wants to believe her.

  
  


-

  
  


A list of things that he’ll miss about skating with Kelly (in no particular order).

Grabbing breakfast after practice. Only on Saturdays, though, and always something healthy. They’d eat fruit cups and bowls of oatmeal and Kelly would talk about that one day where they’d gorge themselves on pancakes. _After worlds_ he’d said and she’d nodded. (Only then they’d come back with silver medals around their necks. She disappeared to ballet rehearsals and he never left the ice. Lynette pulled down sandbags for him to dance with.)

Her skates. She’d leave a bit of pink tied somewhere in the laces and he’d take comfort in staring at it when he wasn’t supposed to.

Watching tapes on that couch in the break room. She’d always leave space between them, the crack between the cushions, and he’d never minded. She studied the tapes just as hard as he did, took notes even in a little notebook, scribbling out things in gel pen. 

Winning. The first time he ever placed first in a competition, she was skating with him. He wonders how long he’ll associate the feeling of a gold medal around his neck with her hand in his. He hopes it’s not long. 

The future. For two, nearly three, years, he really did think that she could be it, that they could be it. But now that’s over.

Mostly, though, he’s just afraid that he’s never going to be able to find someone who skates with him like Kelly had. (He tries very hard not to think of Allie Pressman, because that’s not fair to anyone.)

  
  


-

  
  


He’s got five days before he’s in Michigan. Kelly’s already gone, landed in New York City, probably moved into the dorms by now. He’s at the rink, of course, the sun shining in through the windows masking the fact that it’s only forty degrees out.

He doesn’t even need to be at the rink; he’s auditioning new partners in Michigan, his new coach supposedly in the process of looking through applicants, but here he is anyway, because he’d woken up this morning and checked the schedule and decided that _why the fuck shouldn’t he skate._

And he doesn’t regret it now, driving the half hour to the rink, no, he doesn’t regret it at all, even though Allie and Will are across the ice from him, far away, but their voices still echoing as they fight. 

Actually wait, that’s wrong. It’s mostly Allie’s voice echoing.

“Excuse me?” he can hear her say, loud and clear, and something like the start to a lot of things that Harry probably isn’t supposed to hear. “What do you mean _this isn’t working out?_ We’ve been doing this since we were fourteen. I’ve known you since we were tweleve and we were about to move six hundred and fifty fucking miles to Michigan so we could have shot at the Olympics and _now_ you’re telling me that this isn’t working!?”

Harry can feel his eyes widening. He can’t seem to stop staring at them, at her. He can’t seem to stop watching everything go wrong. It feels like some alternate version of the cafe scene. 

Will says sorry, too quick, too loud. Allie shouts a _fuck you_ so loud that nearby skaters turn to watch, before skating away with long strides, barely slowing down when she hits the boards, barely stopping to put on her skate guards. Will doesn’t move to follow her. Harry does.

Because fuck, it seems like Kelly might’ve taken all of his common sense with him when she left for New York.

She’s just slipped into the hallway, and he’s just caught the door behind her when she turns around to glare at him. “Not now, Bingham.” The words are caught somewhere between harsh and desperate.

He takes another step closer to her and she moves to sit down, back pressed against the wall. She’s staring up at the ceiling, studying the patterns in the plaster. He sits down beside her.

“Fuck Will,” Harry says forcefully and she snorts, messy and sad. There’s a tear running down the side of her face closest to him, a second somewhere else. She’s trying to blink them away.

“I’m so stupid,” she says slowly, stretching out each word. Harry’s quick to shake his head. 

“No you’re not.”

She lets out this half laugh that’s completely devoid of any humor. It’s more like a breath; shaky and loud. “ I… I had a chance to be something great all on my own and I gave it up so that I could skate with him and now that’s over and I think I fucked up.” 

“Kelly quit.”

“I heard.” Allie swallows, wipes the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Ballet?”

“Yep.” He pops the P. She snorts a little again. 

“Sorry about that.”

“Sorry about Will.”

Allie makes a face, her nose scrunching up and the top of her lip rising. “Can we please not talk about him.”

They sit for a moment. Allie slips off her skates, sliding them as far away from herself as she can. He copies her, tossing them beside hers with a level of recklessness that almost makes her laugh. He wants to tell her that he’s got new ones at home, ones that he wants to use for the first time in Michigan as though that’ll make them special. It doesn't feel like the right time, though, no, not now, not with Allie’s head leaning just barely against his shoulder. It’s wrong how much he wants it to stay like this for forever.

He needs to stop thinking in terms of forever; it never works out like that. 

So Harry gives himself a minute, one minute with her head on his shoulder, one minute to pretend like this is normal, before he pushes himself up and offers her his hand. 

“You want an orange?”

She stares up at him. “Will you peel it for me?”

He laughs, breathy and normal and Allie smiles, just the corners of her mouth rising. “Sure, Pressman.”

They’re both barefoot and he slides a little as he pulls her up. She slides to the kitchenette on purpose, and he follows, their socks garnering little friction on the cold linoleum. He wonders what Canton’s going to be like, if it’ll ever compare to this tiny rink in Greenwich where everything started.

From the bowl in the middle of the kitchenette, he grabs a clementine. Allie plays with her hands while her eyes flit around the room, never settling on anything for more than a second.

“I’ll miss this place,” she says finally, quiet and deliberate.

“Yeah?” 

She nods. “Yeah. It kinda feels like home sometimes, you know?” 

He does know. It’s like how he knows about the outlet that doesn’t work in the corner of the kitchenette, about the bit of the boards on the far left that shake a little from when he crashed into them five years ago. It’s like how he knows that the front door squeaks in the winter, and that the lockers stick if you don’t put the combo in quickly enough.

“Canton will feel like this one day.” Harry’s not sure if that’s true. He wants that to be true, though. He hands her the orange, tossing the peel in the trash. She takes it apart slowly, handing him a piece. 

“I’ll have to find a new partner there,” Allie says just as a small group of skaters, kids (once upon a time Allie was that small and Cassandra was that small and he was that small and everything was different), walk past the open door. 

He pauses, tries to choose his next words carefully as he attempts to figure out what exactly is happening. He was nine and she was eight and maybe he fucked up but now there’s a chance. There’s a chance, and then there’s also a solution to all of their problems and somehow they’re the same. 

“What about us?” he asks, nervous, more nervous than he ever is before performing. It’s like that day Will was late and he got to skate with her. He was nervous then too. 

“What?” she questions, soft and rushed.

“You and me, Pressman. Partners.” She stares at him, like she’s not quite understanding something. He continues. “You just lost Will. Kelly just quit. This is perfect.”

She bites the inside of her lip, the orange separated into pieces left sitting on a paper towel on the table beside her. “I wouldn’t call it perfect.”

God, this was stupid, stupid of him to ever think that she’d want to skate with him, stupid of him to ever think that this was some kind of second chance. 

But then Allie nods, slow and sure. “Okay. Let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stars look like jewels in the crown of the night sky, and she thinks, faintly, that this is the moment she wants a picture of; the two of them, side by side on the beach, holding on so tight that it hurts.
> 
> -
> 
> _or harry and allie and just about two years in canton_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! hope you all are doing well!
> 
> sorry that this took forever. i wrote most of it last night, and i think it might like it even more than the first chapter. 
> 
> the biggest of thanks to [backfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire) for beta-ing this for me! it'd be a literal mess without her help, and i am forever grateful.
> 
> hope you all enjoy!

**PART TWO. (the wait)**

  
  


-

  
  


**between.**

  
  


-

  
  


She’s sixteen and he’s seventeen. 

And the Olympics are in less than three years.

  
  


-

  
  


**iii.**

  
  


-

  
  


Harry sleeps the entire flight over. 

Allie thinks it’s the half a xanax he’d taken at the airport gate. He’d offered her the other half and she’d shook her head no. He’d shrugged. _Your loss._

God, she wishes she’d taken him up on it. 

It’s only two hours, and she’s never struggled with flying before, _never,_ but here she is, thirty thousand feet in the air, shaking for some odd reason. 

She’d cried all through TSA. She’d cried before that too, when Cassandra hugged her goodbye at the airport entrance doors, people pushing past them. She’d cried when Sarah Bingham had wished her _good luck_ and when her mom had said that this could _really be something special._

And she’d thought that it was over now, that she’d taken a deep breath and pushed all of those feelings away, that she wasn’t scared anymore, no, that she wouldn’t be scared until she stepped foot on the rink in Canton. She was wrong. 

It’s eight in the morning and she’s in the sky, the plane surrounded by fluffy white clouds, cities lined up below. Harry’s beside her, his breathing faint, one arm laid atop the shared armrest. He has a zebra print neck pillow that he’d bought for twenty dollars at an airport shop just because it had made her laugh. The screen in front of her is playing _Ten Things I Hate About You,_ but she’s not paying any attention to the movie.

The plane is cold, freezing, cold enough that she has a sweater on even under the fuzzy blanket Harry’s draped over both of them. She takes it that this is what he likes to do-- share blankets and lean too close on early morning flights. 

And that scares her a little, the idea of this becoming normal in the same way Will once was. God, that scares her so much.

It’s only been five days, but everything’s different. It’s not Will beside her anymore, he probably never will be again. There’s no more sharing earbuds on flights to watch the same movies. No more vending machine snacks in her room after competitions. No more staring at a mess of curly hair somewhere across the rink and thinking _what if._

It’s just weird to think that that’s over, that her life in Greenwich, that chapter, has all been wrapped up. Her life seems to fit into these perfect little stages so easily; clean before-and-afters.

There are a million things that Canton needs to be for everything to be perfect. God, there are a million things that _Harry_ needs to be for everything to be perfect. Now, her story doesn’t start at fourteen when she took the hand of some boy who she called her best friend. No, now her story starts way back when she was seven and he was eight. Or maybe when she was four and he was five.

And now her future is right there, under the Olympic rings in Beijing. And now her future is with him.

  
  


-

  
  


Their new coach, a man named Pfieffer who Allie had met before, once at a competition in some Eastern European country, meets them at the airport. He has a name card and barely says anything to them. Harry’s still too close, though it almost doesn’t feel wrong now. Their luggage matches, entirely on accident, but the wheels on her bag keep catching on the grooves in the ground. Their walk through the airport is brisk, and Harry’s arm keeps brushing against hers. 

Pfieffer drives them to the apartment complex they're staying at, and it’s silent the entire drive. God, it’s eerie. Harry texts her five minutes into the drive a ‘ _wtf’_ and she grins. 

_‘Ikr,’_ she texts back, all light and easy. 

It’s only ten in the morning.

  
  


-

  
  


Allie barely knows anything about her roommate. She knows her name, _Elle Tomkins,_ and her age, _seventeen,_ and that she’s a _figure skater_ from San Francisco. 

Elle’s number is somewhere on Allie’s phone, and there’s a stilted text conversation filled with half introductions right below it. It’s like neither of them are really trying. Sometimes Allie wonders if there’s even a point in trying, wonders how to build relationships outside of skating, outside of Harry. She was never really good at that part. 

Harry doesn’t have a roommate. He’s nearly eighteen, and, while Allie’s sure there was an argument around it, she’s never known Harry not to get what he wanted.

On the surface it sounds nice, having a place all to yourself, but the more Allie thinks about it, (on the plane, in the car, while unpacking her things) the worse it gets. She thinks it’d be too much change for her, being alone right now. It’d be too much just in general.

Elle’s there when she arrives, sitting on a grey couch in the living area. The apartment seems to be one of those places that comes pre-furnished, and feels more like a dorm than anything else. 

Maybe this is her college experience. Maybe that’s how she’ll justify the insane amount of money her parents are spending for her to be here.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Elle says, standing up as Allie walks in, moving to help her with her luggage. Harry is still in the hallway, holding his key but facing her. 

“You need any help unpacking?” he asks. 

Allie shakes her head, waves him away, and says, “I’ll text you later,” before moving to shut the door. She turns to face Elle, smiles as wide as she can muster. Her head hurts a little, maybe from the travel. She just feels tired, like she didn’t get enough sleep. She didn’t get enough sleep.

“It’s nice to finally meet you too,” she tells Elle, pulling her luggage farther in. The rollie wheel is still broken, and God, all she wants to do right now is leave the bag by the door and sleep. 

“Your room is the one farthest down the hall,” Elle says, pointing somewhere.

“Thanks.”

“If you need any help unpacking, I don’t have practice until one.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

In her room, in the tiny beige box that she’ll have to start calling home, everything is lit by a single window and an ugly light fixture. There’s a small closet and a desk and a mirror. The bed is pushed into the corner, a set of bedding folded on it. She’ll have to buy new stuff, new sheets and pillows and a comforter. Maybe she can get Harry to go to Target with her.

God, just thinking about that makes her feel even more tired.

  
  


-

  
  


“How much more difficult do you think it’s going to be?” Allie asks. They’re on the roof of the building; it’s no access, a taped up sign in front of the door, but Harry lives his life without clear rules, and Allie follows him now.

It’s been years since she wasn’t following someone else.

“I don’t think it’ll be worse; it’ll just be more, waking up earlier, more competitions, and more attention,” he says. And it’s dark outside, the sun setting, a blue tinge appearing everywhere. The moon is big somewhere behind them, the only reason why she hasn’t moved to go back inside.

She misses home, hates how claustrophobic this all feels, is scared that it’ll never become normal, and-- “Do you think we made a mistake?”

Harry turns to her, his eyes flitting up and down her face. He shakes his head. “No.”

She’s not sure if she believes that, not yet, at least. 

Up on the roof, the highest they’ll ever get here in Canton, watching the cars pass on the street below, she realizes that things will never go back to the way they were, that Harry’s her partner now, her only chance at being something great. And he’s close beside her, his arm pressed to hers, warm and constant. It’s okay now, for him to be beside her. That’s something she realizes too. 

“You wanna go back inside, Pressman? Maybe help me finish unpacking?”

“Yeah,” she breathes out, loud, maybe, it doesn’t matter. “Sure.”

  
  


-

  
  


Greenwich was bright. Canton is gray.

It takes her two weeks to figure that out. 

In between, she meets the people who make up the Arctic Edge Skating Rink. There’s the hockey team, made up of a whole bunch of loud, large guys, but most notably Luke and Grizz who make a point to introduce themselves. There’s Luke’s girlfriend, Helena, a singles skater who trains with Elle, and Gordie, the club's only senior level male figure skater. And then there’s Lexie and Jason who do a different disciple of pairs skating, and Clark and Gwen who are technically Harry and Allie’s competition.

There’s a million other people, too, but they’re just faces without real names, so they don’t really matter as much to her.

Canton is gray because of the people. They’re not fully fleshed out yet, not in the way things were back in Greenwich. She practically spent her whole life at that rink, so she reasons it only makes sense that things haven’t yet gained full color here. 

But it also _feels_ gray in Canton, the air and the sky and the buildings. It feels like someone put a filter over everything so it’d fit into some aesthetic.

The days here blur together in a way it never did in Greenwich. It becomes weeks of the same, of going into school on Mondays to confirm that she’s on track for her GED, of Harry driving her in that car his mother had sent up to wherever just so they could be somewhere besides the apartment complex or the rink. 

They drive into Detroit sometimes, parking downtown in the first spot they can find and walking around as the sun sets. She likes the city, finds comfort in the overpriced restaurants and crowded streets. She likes how the buildings tower over them, how bright it feels all the time.

She likes running around the city with Harry’s hand in hers, him pulling her through the streets, them sprinting back to his car that’s been parked in a _no parking_ zone for twenty minutes. She likes how the air is always a little bit cold, how it feels like it might start snowing at any minute even though it’s April and the sky’s a clear blue.

She tries to convince herself that she _likes_ Michigan, that maybe one day it could be like home to her. She tries to forget about Greenwich, about how cold the metal of the door handles would get in the winter, how the locks on the lockers always stuck, how there are those boards at the edge of the rink that are warped inward from when Harry crashed into them, that outlet in the kitchenette that doesn’t work.

She can’t.

  
  


-

  
  


Their first competition as a pair is a small one, some regional thing that doesn’t even count towards their global standings, but it still means something when they win gold. The feeling that she has, the one she had back home when he took her hand and they glided around the rink, that feeling that skating with him is so inexplicably right, is suddenly justified. 

But still, it’s different, standing beside him on the top of the podium. And it’s different when he says _good skate_ to her while they’re still on the ice, too close, in a tight embrace, words breathy and faded.

That doesn’t matter, though. No, the only thing that matters right now is the Olympics.

“We did good, Pressman,” Harry says backstage. She’s got her sports bag on, slung over one shoulder, pressed into her side. He’s still wearing the gold medal, right over his _Arctic Edge Skating Club_ hoodie. Her’s is in her bag, right at the top. It’ll go on her wall when she gets home.

“Yeah, Bingham, we did.” And he pulls her to sit beside him on some bench. Individual medals are being awarded, the sound of the crowd loud even from the back. 

“We’re ready for this,” he tells her, slow and sure. It sounds like something Pfieffer would force them to say to one another, some half-assed motivational bullshit. She doesn’t care. 

“Yeah?”

Harry nods. “Yeah,” he says, placing his own medal around her neck. She rolls her eyes, ignores how his fingers brush up against her skin. They spend entire days pressed close, but she wonders if she’ll ever truly get used to being so near to him.

She tilts her head back, stares up at him. He’s still too close. “You know, I have my own medal,” she tells him, softly. The crowd has gone quiet, and, for a second, she wonders if he even hears her.

He moves her hair out from under the ribbon, pushing a strand behind her ear. “Yeah, I know.”

No, she doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to this. 

  
  


-

  
  


On the way home, they stop at a diner and share a plate of fries. 

Outside, it’s snowing, even though it’s nearly May. She’d caught two snowflakes on the tip of her tongue before Harry had pulled her through the door. He’d been grinning, though, wide enough that she thinks he would’ve followed her back outside if she’d just asked.

It’s been well over a month, but sometimes she still forgets that he’s her’s, that they’re partners, that there’s no use feeling guilty when they’re alone. 

  
  


-

  
  


Allie likes Elle a lot more than she had expected to. 

She likes coming home from the rink and seeing someone else, someone other than Harry or Pfieffer or Clark and Gwen who _always_ seem to be _right there,_ watching everything she and Harry do. God, she’s not used to that type of competition. She’s used to the type of competition that you grow up with, used to feeling almost closer to friends than rivals. 

She likes that Elle bakes and has to be on the same stupid diets Allie’s on, that they’re both eating dinners of steamed broccoli and boiled chicken and one fourth cup of brown rice, that dessert is that orange Allie put in the freezer half and hour ago so they could try to pretend it was sherbet. 

She likes how Elle makes it so much easier to pretend that she’s not entirely dependent on Harry, like the idea that there’s someone else there that she can turn to if everything suddenly goes to shit.

She likes how Elle’s her friend. 

And Elle tells Allie that she used to be a ballerina, that that’s how it all started. She tells Allie that she gave it all up, gave up a spot at a school in New York, for this, for figure skating. Allie understands. 

“When I was little, I thought I could win gold all on my own,” she tells Elle. It’s dark out but barely late. They’re not allowed up late, it’s not practical with early morning practice. She and Harry have to be at the rink by six thirty tomorrow morning. “But I don’t think I could anymore.” 

“Is it nice?” Elle asks. “Having a partner?”

Allie thinks. She thinks about that feeling of winning, of the weight of a gold medal, of the American flag wrapped around her shoulders. She thinks of mastering a skill, a spin or a lift or a bit of footwork. So much of it is comparable to her time before, her time as an individual skater. But then she thinks of Harry beside her, of leaning on him until it’s full support, of someone knowing, understanding, every little thing that might be going wrong. 

“Yeah,” she says finally. “It is.”

Somewhere, way in the back of her mind, there’s a list of reasons why she didn’t like skating with Will. She wonders why that list didn’t follow her to Canton. In the silence, in the dark, the only reason she can come up with is Harry.

  
  


-

  
  


She’s exhausted. 

Pfieffer is yelling something at them, something about how they’re _not doing anything right,_ something about how they’re _too messy,_ and _unfocused._ He yells _no, no, no_ over and over and over again until Allie just about feels like she’s breaking down. 

And Harry’s right there, running a hand through his hair, sighing like it’s not his fucking fault too, everything that’s going wrong. And she’d gotten five hours of sleep last night, and still has online work to finish, and she needs to figure out what exactly she’s going to eat for dinner because she can’t remember the last time she ate a _real_ meal, and--

God, this isn’t how things are supposed to be. 

She’d thought that everything would be simpler in Canton, that things would just line up. She was wrong.

They can’t seem to do anything right, no, are to sharp, or too loud, or too sublte, or too _whatever the fuck_ Pfieffer is saying. And her parents are back home paying tens of thousands of dollars for her to do this shit, and Clark and Gwen are right there, staring them down from the edge of the boards, and she just thought that things would be different.

“Let’s just do it again, yeah, Allie?” Harry asks, his voice sharp. And she’s biting her tongue, hard enough to draw blood. _She wants to go home._

Her eyes are closed, but she knows that he’s staring at her. He always is. “Yeah, let’s just try it again.”

  
  


-

  
  


In late June, the other skaters start to disappear for their summer breaks.

Elle packs up her things, and Allie walks with her down to the lobby, waves goodbye from the front of the building, standing there like an idiot until long after Elle is out of sight. She tries to remind herself that it’s _only four weeks,_ but that figure seems to stretch out farther and farther until it seems almost like forever. 

She and Harry are stuck in Canton for the summer. They’re too far behind to be able to afford a break, even if every time Pfieffer yells at them just leaves her longing for Greenwich. She didn’t know it was even possible for her to be this homesick, thought it’d fade with time, but it’s been months now, and there’s still very little she finds familiar about Michigan. 

Summer scares her. She thinks she’s afraid she’ll be alone. She’s afraid of the empty apartment, she’s afraid of the silence and the feeling of everything around her closing in. She misses winter. She misses how everything felt blue, so blue, so bright and vivid and undeniably _right._ She wants things to feel right again.

It scares her a little how _right_ skating with Harry still feels. She hates that that’s the only constant she has. She hates how she still feels guilty, sometimes, when they stand too close.

And they’re together on the ice, just like always, standing by the boards, slipping on skate guards when he turns to her. “You doing anything tonight, Pressman?”

The last time they’d spent time together outside of the rink had been a few days prior. He’d dragged her up to the roof to watch the fireworks on the fourth. There’d been a blanket shared between them and a night sky filled with light. It’d been nice. 

“No,” she says, staring up at him, blinking, once, twice, three times. “Why?”

He grins at her, bright, so bright, as bright at the stars. It's almost too bright to stare at, and that’s something that’s started to feel right too. “You wanna do something?”

  
  


-

  
  


The boardwalk along Lake St. Clair is full of people. 

Harry’s forced an ice cream cone into her hand, vanilla, and it’s possibly the best thing she’s tasted in months. Behind them, the sun’s spilling into the sky, full of pinks and oranges and purples, bathing them both in light. She wants a picture of this moment, wants to remember what it feels like to be at peace. 

“What’s your favorite thing about Michigan?” he asks her. She licks the side of the cone to stop it from dripping onto her hand, and Harry leans down to take a bite. She pushes him away, playfully, and he grins, ice cream dotting the side of his lip. “Answer the question, Pressman.”

Allie shrugs. “I don’t know yet.”

Harry studies her, and she shrugs again, maintains eye contact. She knows that Clark and Gwen struggle with that while skating, and it’s almost upsetting how much pride she takes in her ability to stare at Harry Bingham. 

“I think I like how close we are to the Olympics,” he says, finally, softly this time, like he’s telling her a secret. 

There’s a bit of ice cream melting onto her hand, but suddenly she can’t find it in herself to care. “I like that too,” she replies conspiratorially, and he grins.

The boardwalk ends ahead, leads into the water, and Harry runs until he’s right at the edge, pressing down on her shoulder lightly and saying, “Stop walking, Pressman.”

“Why?” she breathes out, confused, her head tilted just barely to the side. He’s still bathed in the sunset, grinning over at her. 

“Don’t you want a picture? For your Instagram, obviously, to keep the sponsors happy,” he jokes. “Or maybe just one to remember this by.”

Allie rolls her eyes, ignores the feeling in her stomach, the butterflies, ignores how happy she feels, the happiest she’s felt in months. “How do you know I wanna remember this moment?” she asks, smiling because she just can’t help it.

He’s pulled out his phone, disappearing behind it. “I don’t, but maybe… maybe _I_ want to remember it.”

The butterflies double as she hears the shutter click, and have tripled by the time he’s returned to her side. The sun’s almost entirely gone now, disappearing down the horizon. 

She pushes the last of the ice cream cone into his hand. “You want it?” she asks, pulling out her own phone as he takes it, struggling to open the camera app with sticky fingers. The last of the light is bright, and she’s afraid to look at the pictures he’s sent to her, but somehow even more afraid to look at the pictures she’s just now taken of him.

The butterflies don’t seem to want to go away.

  
  


\- 

  
  


They lay on their backs on the beach, and there's sand in her hair, sand everywhere, but she doesn't really care.

Above them, the sky is littered with stars, little pinpricks of light that almost feel too bright to look at. Harry’s arm is pressed against hers, his skin in constant contact, and she can feel him move even closer as he shifts to trace the outline of the sky. 

“That’s the North Star,” he tells her, and her gaze turns to where he’s pointing. It’s brighter than the rest, larger. 

Her voice feels a little like just a breath. “How’d you know that?”

“My dad had a telescope. During the summer, he’d point out different constellations. I don’t really remember any of them, though.” 

Allie swallows, tries not to think of the implications of Harry even mentioning his dad. He’s gone now, passed in a car accident years ago. That year, he’d taken the season off, and she didn’t see him for months. 

“You miss him?” she asks quietly, quiet enough that he can pretend he doesn’t hear her if he wants to. She doesn’t think she would mind.

But Harry nods. “Yeah. Every day.”

She turns to face him, his profile lit up by the moon. Blindly, she reaches for his hand, squeezing just once. He squeezes back. 

The sand is getting tangled into her hair, but she doesn’t even care, not right now, not next to him. The stars look like jewels in the crown of the night sky, and she thinks, faintly, that _this_ is the moment she wants a picture of; the two of them, side by side on the beach, holding on so tight that it hurts. 

  
  


-

  
  


She doesn’t look at the pictures until she’s home, lying in bed, her room dark and the apartment silent. 

They don’t end up on her Instagram. No, they feel too personal, too private. And she doesn’t send Harry the ones she took of him, because she thinks she wants those just for herself. 

  
  


-

  
  


Elle returns on a Friday, and everyone else seems to be back at the rink by the weekend, so Harry arranges for a group dinner at some place in town. It’s bound to be something greasy, full of carbs (the unhealthy type), undoubtedly a meal no one can tell their coaches about. 

People are excited.

Grizz sits shotgun in Harry’s Maserati, shifting the seat back from where Allie usually keeps it. Harry makes eye contact with her in the rear view mirror, rolling his eyes, and she feels a little like it’s some sort of inside joke. 

In the back seat, Elle’s squished between her and Lexie. Everyone else is piled into Luke’s pickup, this gray car that Allie’s seen him double park twice. Helena had told her once that Luke hates the car, that it’d been an eighteenth birthday gift from his dad. Allie’s not sure if she’s properly friends with either of them, doesn’t know what to do with that information. 

Outside the restaurant, Harry gathers everyone together. “Remember,” he calls out, loud enough that a few passersby have turned to listen. “If anyone at the rink asks, this never happened.” 

Everyone laughs, and Grizz holds open the door as they walk inside, two waiters fighting over who gets stuck with their table, an elderly couple glaring from a window booth. Two tables have to be pushed together to fit all of them, a divide down the middle. Allie sits down beside Harry, blindly.

“You paying, Bingham?” Jason asks, studying the menu. Allie’s taking a sip of her water; there’s a lemon wedge floating near the top. She and Harry came here just last week. She already knows she’s getting a salad, dressing on the side. She already knows that Harry will push pieces of steak onto her plate, slip her fries so casually that she won’t even notice she’s eating them. Under the table, their knees are brushing, and it hurts her, just a little, how domestic all of this feels.

“In your dreams, Alvarado.”

Helena makes them say grace before eating, Clark spills water everywhere, Elle finds a way to split a slice of chocolate cake five ways, and Jason and Harry throw food across the table until Lexie yells at them.

Allie thinks that maybe, probably, almost definitely, she’ll be friends with these people one day, all of them. Sitting shotgun in Harry’s car, driving home, that idea doesn’t even scare her.

  
  


-

  
  


Sometimes, she thinks that she really shouldn’t be Harry’s partner. It’s when he’s somewhere across the rink, talking to the _New Girl_ from California. It’s when he stands too close and whispers _good job_ and forces butterflies into her stomach. It’s when she realises that everything was easier back in Greenwich, back when it was Will and she was trying to force herself to have feelings for her partner. God, she wasn’t ready for them just to _be there._

But then she catches his glance while he skates towards her in the morning, his smile somehow bright at six am. She catches herself staring at a mess of dark brown curls and thinks suddenly that maybe this _might work out._

It needs to work out.

  
  


-

  
  


She and Elle grow plants in little jars on their windowsill. The apartment is starting to feel like a home. It’s scary. 

In a lot of ways, Elle is everything Allie could’ve been.

She realises this while she waits for Elle to finish at the rink, while she watches from the stands as her friend, one of her few friends in Canton, struggles to execute a double axel. 

It feels a bit like she’s watching herself, like this is all some glimpse into what her life almost was.

At a competition in New York, after Elle’s skate, while she stands in the middle of the ice, chest rising and falling, Allie tries to remember that feeling, of being all alone on the ice, all of the eyes on you, any blame or mistakes concentrated and multiplied.

With a start, she realises that she can’t.

  
  


-

  
  


Harry’s birthday is celebrated at his apartment with just the two of them. It’s a stark contrast to the parties he used to have, these near ordeals that always went on for hours longer than they really should’ve. 

He’s eighteen, and it’s just the two of them passing back and forth a bottle of cheap vodka that an older skater had bought and slipped to Harry with a bow on top. And she’s never been drunk before, not properly, nothing more than a light buzz, the kind that makes you feel a little warm, a little soft. Even then, that’s only ever been after competitions at those parties that spanned entire hotel floors, or during poorly monitored holiday parties full of glasses of champagne. No, she’s never been drunk, but here she is, on Harry Bingham’s birthday, more intoxicated than she’d care to admit.

“Do you think I’ll have a hangover tomorrow?” she asks, giggling softly as he rolls the bottle away from them. 

“Definitely.”

She lays down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He moves to lay beside her. “You should put glow in the dark star stickers up there,” she tells him, tracing patterns in the air with her pointer figure. His eyes follow languidly. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’ll order them on Amazon for you. My mom just gave me the new password to her Prime account, so they’ll be here in two days.”

He nods, leaning his head towards her. He’s captured a strand of her hair and is twirling it between his fingers. She doesn’t mind. “We can make constellations.”

“Yeah.”

Harry sits up, slowly, like it takes all the effort in the world, and she moves her head into his lap before she even realises what she’s doing, staring up at him with wide eyes. “One day, Pressman,” he starts, blinking down at her. She’s biting her lip, afraid of what happens if she draws blood. “I’ll take you stargazing. For real.”

She smiles, exhaling delicately as his eyes rest on hers, flitting slowly down to her lips. “I think I’d like that.”

“After the Olympics?”

She raises her eyebrows, her eyes widening almost comically. “But that’s so far away.”

He shrugs. “It’ll be worth the wait, Pressman. Just like everything else.”

“Everything else?” she asks, softly.

He nods, staring down at her. “Yeah. God, Pressman,” he says, wistfully. “Maybe once the Olympics are over I can finally kiss you.”

Allie blinks up at him, thinks for a moment about what she wants to do post-Olympics. She wonders if he has a list somewhere, written up on lined paper or typed into the notes app of his phone. She’d want to see it, if it’s real. Maybe it’d give her some inspiration.

“There’s a lot of stuff we can finally do once the Olympics are over,” she says, finally. “But we just have to wait, wait until we have gold medals around our necks.”

She stands up suddenly, grabbing his hands and trying to pull him up too. He obliges after a moment, keeping their hands clasped tight. “What are you doing, Pressman?”

She grins up at him, her head tilted back just slightly so she can look him in the eyes. He’s got flecks of gold in his irises, standing out against the brown. “We’re going to dance.”

“What?” he asks, but he’s smiling down at her so fondly that butterflies appear in her stomach. She ignores them.

“We’re going to dance, Bingham, like we’re on the ice, but instead of being on the ice, we’ll be in your living room.”

“There’s no music.”

She sighs, rather dramatically. Around her, things feel just a little bit fuzzy. It’s almost comforting. “There’s music in our heads.”

But Harry’s already pulled out his phone. A second later, a waltz is playing, soft enough that she can almost pretend it’s not real.

He takes her hands again, guides her to the middle of the room, to that empty space where a coffee table should be. He’s warm, so warm, and when she rests her head against his chest, she swears she can hear his heartbeat, loud and clear. 

Faintly, she wonders if this is how Harry wanted to start his eighteenth year, dancing with her while drunk in his apartment. It’s only later, just as she falls asleep in her own apartment, that she realises she forgot to ask.

  
  


-

  
  


The first snow happens in October. It doesn’t stick, but she drags Harry up to the roof anyway to watch it fall. 

“God, Pressman, you’re insane,” he tells her, shivering. She rolls her eyes. 

“You know what this means, right?” she asks, watching as the snowflakes catch in his hair. 

He shakes his head. 

“This is pretty much the start to our first ever senior grand prix. In a week we’ll be in Vegas for _Skate America.”_

His lips part, and for a second, she thinks he’s about to say something. The words never come, though. No, instead, he shakes his head, his eyes still bright, still sparkling. “Let’s go back inside, Pressman.”

  
  


-

  
  


Clark and Gwen place first in Vegas, but Harry and Allie are only two points behind them, a feat that seemed impossible just months before.

Allie has to remind herself to be proud that they’re even on the podium, has to remind herself that silver _isn’t bad,_ that she should be happy.

The medal still comes off the second they get backstage.

“You guys did really good,” Gwen tells them, shouldering her bag, and smiling tightly. Beside her, Clark nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Not gonna lie, we were a little surprised.” Gwen elbows Clark in the ribs, and he shrugs at her. _It’s true, though_ evident in his face.

“Thanks,” Allie says, ignoring how Harry’s squeezing her hand tighter than before, how his jaw is clenched, and his gaze cold. “You guys did really good too.”

They don’t follow Gwen and Clark out of the building, no, she pulls Harry behind her towards a vending machine, asks for a dollar bill, and punches in the code for hot cheetos. 

“Clark’s a fucking idiot,” Harry says, reaching for a cheeto. 

Allie shrugs. “I would’ve been surprised too, though,”

“Why?”

“It’s our first senior competition, our first season together. It’s almost like we’re brand new to this.” She pauses, exhales slowly, stares up at him. He’s holding the bag of hot cheetos now, and it’s only then that she realizes that they were more for him than her. 

“And next time we’ll win,” she finishes, offering him a light quirk in her lip. 

He sighs, dramatically, like he can’t handle her, or something, like it’s all too much. “We better, Pressman.”

Elle calls later, once Allie is back in her hotel room, and asks how they did. It’s then that Allie finally takes pride in the silver, something like hope blossoming in the bottom of her chest. “Really, really well.”

  
  


-

  
  


They dive headfirst into training. 

In the mornings, she’s so sore that it hurts, and bruises line Harry’s quads from their lifts. 

They don’t go home for Thanksgiving.

  
  


-

  
  


The airport is crowded, people everywhere, bumping and pushing, and rushing past trying to reach connecting flights.

It’s December, and it’s snowing when they land in Hartford, three days before Christmas.

And she didn’t realise how much she missed her family, _not really,_ until they’re right in front of her. Close enough to touch, to hug, just so, incredibly, undeniably there.

“We’ve been watching all of your competitions,” her mom tells her tearfully, and Allie realises that she’s crying too, streaks running down her face. Karen hands her a tissue, and Allie smiles gratefully.

“Thanks,” Harry says, for both of them. She thinks he might be tearing up a little too.

  
  


-

  
  


She doesn’t realise she’s driving to the rink until she gets there. 

It’s empty, about to close, half the lights switched off, but the custodian remembers her, remembers how Cassandra always used to make cards for the staff on their birthdays, remembers how Allie would make chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting. She nearly cries when he hugs her, asks her how she’s doing in Canton, how Harry’s doing. 

“Good,” she sputters, biting back tears. 

He nods at her, proud, and she fully breaks down when his back turns. 

But that part doesn’t matter, though, no, the part that matters is she’s alone on the ice, all alone. 

And there’s no music this time, no waltz in the background and no Harry Bingham to take her hand, but in her head, she can’t help but remember a program from a time before. 

She was thirteen, nearly fourteen, and it was her last program as an individual skater, done to a song from _Anastasia._ She can nearly remember all of it, every spin, jump, and turn. She remembers the starting position, her hands clasped in front of her, remembers placing first at that regional competition. She would’ve taken it all the way if Cass hadn’t gotten sick that year. 

On the ice, alone, she skates her way through the program, pretends that it’s nationals, that this is how she qualifies for the Olympics. And at the end, just as her hands return to her sides, out of breath, crying, she hears clapping from the stands. 

For a second, she thinks she’s imagining it, thinks that she’s going crazy, that the stress of her first senior season is finally getting to her, but then she spots him. She stares, unmoving, her eyes wide, lips parted. He waves, small, offers a smile.

It’s Will. 

“You would’ve been a good individual skater,” he tells her, but no, she’s already off the ice, rushing to get her skates off. She doesn’t want to see him, can’t, not now. She hates that he’s a _what if_ in her mind, a point of contingency. She hates that he was the one who left.

“Allie,” he calls out when she doesn’t respond. She ignores him, doesn’t bother tying her shoes, and rushes out of the rink, her shoe laces hitting the linoleum as she runs. 

She cries in her car, cries for the third time that day, but later, later when she gets home, when Cass asks where she went, Allie lies. “I went to the gym.” She thinks that maybe, if she tries hard enough, she can convince herself that Will was only in her head. 

  
  


-

  
  


Clark gets food poisoning the night before the Free Dance at nationals and can’t compete. Harry and Allie come in first.

Everyone’s there, Cassandra, her parents, Harry’s mom and sister, and Allie’s never been more proud of a gold medal. She keeps it around her neck as they move backstage, and Harry’s still got an American flag draped around his shoulders. They’re both smiling, grinning so wide that it just about hurts, and she never wants this feeling to fade.

Later, while their families are out at dinner, after Harry’s placed his medal around Sarah’s neck, and Allie’s let her hair down out of it’s horrible updo, Cassandra whispers to her, “You guys could go all the way.”

Around them, everyone is talking, but, for a second, Allie feels like she’s in her own world. “Yeah,” she whispers back, feverently. “I think we can.”

  
  


-

  
  


It’s Jason’s party, but Lexie’s the one to welcome her inside.

It’s so loud, the speakers rattling the floors, and Allie can’t imagine ever hosting something like this at the apartment complex. It’s Jason’s family’s home, though, this sprawling McMansion in the middle of the Detroit suburbs. She’d heard once that his family relocated out here for him; she can’t imagine ever uprooting her family like that.

And she doesn’t know how it happens, but she’s only been there for thirty minutes, and she’s in the corner of the living room, perched on an armchair with a half empty red solo cup of beer that’s more for show than anything else. 

God, she doesn’t even know why she’s here, why she bothered accepting Jason’s invitation. She knows that it was more for Harry than her, only barely thrown in her direction. She’d put on make-up for this, that lip gloss Cass had bought her, the waterproof mascara that takes two makeup wipes to get off, something sparkly all over her eyelids. 

She feels fake. 

Harry’s probably off somewhere with some figure skater who _just moved here._ Maybe later he’ll even introduce them, say the wrong name. The girl probably won’t even care, will just blush and giggle and correct him all bashfully. She knows for a fact that he won’t remember it later, but that won’t matter either.

Allie downs the rest of her beer, stands, wobbly at first, _vertigo,_ and moves to grab some more. Maybe there’ll be someone cute by the keg, maybe he’ll offer to fill her cup, ask her to dance, make out with her in the corner. 

She thinks that’d be nice.

Only, she runs into Harry first. 

He grins at her, something akin to surprise in his eyes. “Pressman,” he says, nearly a shout. Someone bumps into her from behind, and she stumbles even closer to him. He catches her by the waist, his hand remaining there even after she’s regained her balance.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

She shrugs, switching their cups. "Wasn't sure if I'd come."

His eyes flutter up and down her face, lingering on her lips a second longer than they probably should. It reminds her of his eighteenth birthday, of them getting drunk off of cheap vodka, and dancing to a soft waltz in his living room. It’s like it follows them, that waltz, wonders if one day they could maybe use it for a program. 

They’re still for a moment, movement surrounding them, but no, they’re completely still, and he must be reading her mind when he finally asks, “You wanna dance, Pressman?”

She blinks up at him. “Sure.”

There’s some Ed Sheeran song on now. Allie thinks she spots Gwen and Clark making out on the couch, Helena and Luke by the stairs. She ignores them, and tries to ignore how Harry’s hand is still on her waist, resting under her shirt, now. She tries to ignore how warm his hand is, how his fingers feel splayed across her skin. God, she really should be used to it by now.

“This is okay, right?” he asks, and they’re swaying now, swaying along to the song.

She exhales, softly, bites the inside of her lip and gazes over at him. “Yeah. We practically do this every day, right?”

He nods, looks a bit like he’s trying to convince himself of something. “Right.”

As the song fades, he stares at her, so intently that she feels the sudden need to look away. She can’t, not as one of his hands moves to rest against her cheek, not as he licks his lips. 

No, she can’t look away.

“Is it okay if…?” 

“We really shouldn’t,” she whispers. His hand is still pressed against her cheek. The flecks in his eyes are still gold, and she makes no attempts to move away.

“No?”

“No,” she says, trying to sound firm and failing _miserably._

But Harry nods, steps back so slowly that she almost moves with him. God, she wants to move with him. “Okay.”

Later, she doesn’t ask him for a ride home. She gets an Uber, like everyone else, and the next morning, when she opens the passenger side car door and they leave for the rink, they don’t mention the almost kiss. 

  
  


-

  
  


She spends four weeks of her summer in Connecticut.

She wears sundresses, and goes to the city pool, and drinks non-alcoholic mimosas with her mom and Karen out on the back patio. 

Harry drives her and Sarah to the beach, and they all come home bright pink, but undeniably happy. 

She doesn’t go to the Greenwich rink once over the course of the break. It takes all of her willpower, but it’s worth it, because she doesn’t think she can afford another breakdown like the one at Christmas, can’t afford to doubt herself now, not when they’re already a season in.

  
  


-

  
  


Clark and Gwen break up in August. 

It’s messy, built up over the course of a couple of weeks, culminating in a fight on the ice in front of half the skating club. Lexie watches in near tears, but Allie’s the first one off the ice, following Gwen into the locker room.

Gwen’s crying, loudly, ripping off her skates before collapsing on the ground, her knees brought up towards her chest. 

“I’m sorry,” Allie says, gingerly, and she means it, she really does. It doesn’t matter if they’re her biggest rivals, doesn’t matter if, come a year and a half, they ended up being the only thing standing between her and the Olympics. 

Gwen takes a shaky breath in, wiping at her eyes. “I know. God, we just… we had a chance to be something great, and we fucked it all up.”

Allie wraps her arms around her, wants to whisper something about how she understands, wants to tell Gwen about Will, about her own chance at being something great _all on her own,_ but it doesn’t feel right. No, she’s not going to make something like this all about her, not right now.

Instead, Allie says, resolutely, “You can still be something great. You don’t need him.”

Gwen blinks up at her, stares for a moment before nodding slowly. “You’re right. I don’t need him.”

In the back of her mind, Allie thinks that she _needs_ Harry, more than she’d ever care to admit. She’s dependent on him, would give up on all of this if he ever left. She doesn’t tell that to Gwen.

  
  


-

  
  


Sitting shotgun in his Maserati, she’s got her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her gaze focused straight ahead. “That’s not going to be us, right?” she asks. “We’re not going to fuck everything up like that, right? We’re not going to let feelings get in the way?”

“Never,” Harry says, firmly. “Olympic gold, Pressman.”

“Olympic gold,” she repeats.

She hates how much time she spends thinking about _after_ the Olympics.

  
  


-

  
  


Clark goes home, and Gwen shows up two months later with a new partner.

It’s Will LeClair.

  
  


-

  
  


Sometimes, she can go months forgetting that Harry wasn’t her first partner. She can go months living in some fantasy world where everything was right right from the start. 

She never told Harry about that time in Greenwich, still wonders sometimes if it was even real, that confirmation that she could’ve been good _all on her own._ She doesn’t plan on telling Harry, no, he doesn’t need to know; she doesn’t want to talk about it. If she tries hard enough, she can almost convince herself that it doesn’t matter. 

It still hurts, seeing Will in Canton.

  
  


-

  
  


“Hey, Allie.”

Will appears behind her suddenly. It was never sudden with him before. Everything about him was gradual. Now though, now she doesn’t even know why he’s in the kitchenette. She wonders where Harry is, if he’s already gone to put his skates on, if she should save him half of the orange. 

“Hey.”

He sits down in one of the chairs, his hands clasped in the middle of the table. “It’s been forever. I’ve missed you”

“Yeah. It’s definitely been a little while.”

He stares up at her. She thinks about offering him the other half of the orange. Decides against it. “And how are--”

“I’m good, Will,” she interrupts. “I’m doing good.”

A part of her is afraid that he’s going to attack her, question how she moved on to a new partner so easily, how quickly she changed the name in all of her plans. She’s afraid of getting in a fight with him, of talking at all about a bit of her life that’s in the past. It’s all _before_ now, and she needs to be focused on the things that are happening in real time, at least that’s what Pfeiffer always says. 

“That’s good,” he says, and she offers him a tight smile. 

“Yeah, it is.” She finishes the last of the orange, throws the peel in the garbage. “My ice time is just about to start, so I have to go, but it was nice talking to you, Will.”

She’s out the door before he has a chance to say _goodbye._

  
  


-

  
  


From across the rink, they watch Gwen and Will train instead of listening to whatever Pfieffer is saying.

When he notices, he yells at them loud enough to draw the attention of Gwen and Will. It’s all a bit of a mess.

The next week, in Lake Placid, they win by four points.

  
  


-

  
  


Lying on the floor of his hotel room, they pretend that the bottled water in the minifridge is vodka.

“That’s another thing we’ll do,” Harry says. It’s about his post-Olympics list. She’s so close to making one too, almost grabs a pen and paper right now. “Get drunk out of our minds and not worry about being hungover at the rink the next morning.”

She laughs, a breathy giggle that sounds strange to her ears. “I’m excited.”

“You should be, Pressman.” He stands up, offering his hands down to pull her up. She lets him, doesn’t think about what’s happening. Their free dance is tomorrow, but they’d scored high enough in the compulsory that nothing short of a catastrophe could knock them off the podium.

“Harry?” 

He turns to her, his phone face up on the table. Faintly, she thinks she knows what he’s doing. “Yeah?”

“You ever think about what could’ve happened if I’d stuck with individual skating, if Cassandra had never gotten sick, if we weren’t partners?” she asks, staring out the single window of the room. The moon is big, bright and shining right in the middle. She thinks that all the fluorescents could go out and she’d still be able to make out the features of his face in the moonlight alone.

“Yeah,” he says, immediately. “All the time.”

When she turns to face him, he’s right there, and that waltz is playing again, so soft, so quiet. 

“We should use that music for a program one day,” she muses. “It’d be perfect, don’t you think?”

Harry pauses, stares down at her, his hand holding her waist, one against her cheek. They’re so close, too close, always too close. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not,” she breathes out, so light that it’s just about a whisper. 

“Don’t you think it should just be for us?”

She hesitates, her eyes flickering up and down his face, landing on his lips. In the background, the waltz is decrescendoing out, filling the space, melting. 

“We need to stop doing this,” she finally whispers. His nose is pressed to hers, has been a million times before, in the ending position to their free dance, releasing from a lift, when they hug before the kiss and cry, when he whispers _good skate._ She hates the feeling in her stomach, how it feels a little like betrayal, like she wants to ruin everything. 

He steps back, his hand just barely grazing her face, his hold on her waist gone. “After the Olympics, Pressman.”

She nods. “After the Olympics.”

  
  


-

  
  


She falls in France, and Harry nearly skates over her hand.

They don’t talk backstage, shoving bronze medals into their bags almost simultaneously, mumbling through a rushed congratulation to Will and Gwen. 

Later, though, later while she’s fumbling with the key to her hotel room, the straps of her bag digging into her shoulder, he comes up behind her. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and for a second, Allie wonders if it was just imagined. She seems to wonder that a lot.

That doesn’t matter. She shakes her head slowly, god, she’s so tired. Something clicks in the door and she’s finally able to get it open. “Wasn’t your fault, Harry.”

“Doesn’t matter. It won’t happen again.” He’s disappeared inside his own hotel room before she can properly turn to face him, before she can look him in the eye and tell him her own promise. She’s left standing in the arch of her open door, staring across the hall like an idiot, but that doesn’t matter.

No, the only thing that matters is that she believes him.

  
  


-

  
  


It doesn’t matter much to her that less than a point separates them from second place, she doesn’t care because she and Harry are the ones at the top of the podium, the American flag hanging behind them, some muzak version of the Star Spangled Banner playing.

They’re in Sweden. It’s mid-March, and cold enough for a layer of snow to cover the ground, almost pure ice. The walkways are salted, the roads too, but off to the side, but powder still lines the edges. 

God, she’s so happy.

“I don’t think I ever wanna leave Stockholm,” she tells him, kicking some slush in front of her, the toes of sneakers already soaked through.

“Ever?” he questions, the corners of his lips quirked up, playful. 

“Ever,” she repeats, just about beaming. She’s kept the gold medal on, the ribbon pressed against her neck, the weight heavy on her chest. 

“I guess I’ll have to move here with you, Pressman,” he says, nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. “We’ll find some rink nearby, learn Swedish.”

Allie laughs, gazes over at him, the background all tiny stars and street lamps. “So you’d follow me here?” she asks, after a moment, avoiding the look in his eyes, the twinkle, how they’re as bright as the stars. 

“God, Pressman, I think I’d follow you just about anywhere.”

She can hear the thumping of her heartbeat in her ears, loud and rhythmic, her eyes following a snowflake as it falls, catching in his hair. “I’d follow you too.”

  
  


-

  
  


Harry drags her to Belle Isle in the middle of May, spring just barely holding on, struggling, really, giving way to near unbearable humidity, and the clearest blue skies Allie thinks she’s ever seen.

“The Olympics are next year,” he tells her, as if she doesn’t already know, as if she’s not counting down the days. _Two hundred and fifty._

“We’re going to win,” she says, firmly, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. He squeezes back.

He swallows, his eyes flitting up and down her face. “And then after?”

“You have that list, don’t you?” she asks, trying desperately to keep everything light. “We’ll go through it, figure everything out.”

In the park, surrounded by green, she wonders when exactly Canton stopped being gray.

  
  


-

  
  


She’s spending her four week summer break at her grandparents house in the Hamptons. Harry will be on some tropical island in the middle of the ocean, sipping those fruity drinks he knows she loves. 

It scares her a little, how nervous she is to be away from him, can’t remember a break they’ve spent fully apart. She tries to push all of that away, tries tries tries, but can’t. 

He’s her best friend. 

At the airport, right next to her gate, he hugs her goodbye, smiling down at her so softly that she can feel her breath catch in her throat. “Have a good summer, Pressman.”

She blinks once, twice, three times. “You too, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orignially, this chapter was going to include both harry and allie's pov's, but it got a little but out of hand. nevertheless, hope you enjoyed, and please tell me what you think!
> 
> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/in_my_head_i_do)
> 
> pt 3 should be up soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe if things were different, he’d have her by now, have her in all the ways he’s not allowed to even want. Maybe they’d actually stand a chance. Who fucking knows.
> 
> -
> 
> _or harry and allie and the olympics_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate writing harry's pov

**PART THREE. (the mess)**

  
  


-

  
  


**between.**

  
  


-

  
  


A list of things Harry wants after the Olympics are over.

Allie Pressman. He wants her in all the ways he’s not allowed to have her. He wants to take her out on a date, to some place nice back in Connecticut. He wants to take her stargazing, to stare up at the sky laying beside her and bring out that telescope his mom still keeps in his room. He wants to kiss her over and over, wants her underneath him, wants to know what it feels like to be fully hers.

...

That’s it. That’s the entire list.

  
  


-

  
  


**iv.**

  
  


-

  
  


Allie sleeps the entire flight over. 

Harry thinks it’s how late she was up last night. She was worried, scared for Nationals, came by his apartment at three in the morning, knocking over and over and over again until he woke up.

“What if we don’t make the team?” she’d said, her eyes rimmed red. He’d blinked at her, pulled her inside the apartment and closed the door behind her.

“Don’t worry, Pressman,” he’d told her, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, moving across the kitchen to make her tea. Chamomile. He’d read once that it helped with anxiety, hates the taste, though, only keeping it in his cabinets for Allie.

“But what if--”

“Allie,” he’d interrupted softly. “We’ll be fine.”

The flight’s just under five hours. Around his neck, he has a zebra print pillow he’d bought forever ago just because it’d made her laugh. It was twenty dollars and worth every penny if only for the look on her face when he pulled it out. Sometimes he thinks he’d do just about anything to make her laugh. That scares him. It’s not healthy, the way he obsesses over her.

Beside him, she shifts, the fuzzy blanket he’s draped over both of them moving with her, leaving his right arm exposed. He doesn’t move it back, afraid to wake her up.

She’s right to worry. They need to do well at Nationals to make the Olympic team. If they don’t, if they fuck up, that’s it. They’ll have to wait another four years.

He doesn’t think he can handle another four years with only part of Allie Pressman.

  
  


-

  
  


San Jose is bright and warm compared to Canton. Winter had come early this year, the city snowy and beautiful for all of ten minutes before the smog turned everything slushy and gray. He doesn’t understand why Allie likes the snow so much, why she stands staring up at the sky, dragging him up to the roof of the apartment building every year to watch it fall for the first time.

Backstage, Will and Gwen stare at silver medals, _they’ve made it_ he thinks, qualified for the Olympics too, but that doesn’t matter. No, nothing really seems to matter right now but her. 

“Beijing,” Allie says, so light and breathy and happy that he smiles. The gold medal is still around her neck, the red, white, and blue ribbon a stark contrast against her skin. It looks good on her, just like everything else.

“Beijing,” he repeats.

Her smile is so bright that for a second he thinks that there’s a real chance it won’t ever fade. He wonders why it never hurts to stare at her, why he can’t ever seem to take his eyes away, no matter how bright she gets. He can’t come up with an answer. 

“We’re ready for this,” she tells him, and he can’t tell if it’s more for his benefit or her own. He doesn’t think it matters. 

“Yeah?” 

She nods, still beaming, still bright. “Yeah,” she says, slipping her medal off, weighing it in her hands for a second before reaching to place it around his neck. 

He stares at her for a moment, stares as her fingers brush gently against his skin, cold, but just barely, and she shrugs. “I don’t know if you remember but--” she takes a step closer to him, adjusting the gold so that it faces outward-- “our first competition as a pair you gave me your medal. I’m just repaying the favor.”

Harry blinks down at her, and the corner of her lips quirk up into a smile. “Thanks, Pressman,” he says finally, and she takes a step back, moving so slowly that he almost wants to move with her.

“Promise me you’ll keep it safe?”

He wonders how she even thinks that’s a question. “I promise.”

  
  


-

  
  


The banquet is exhausting.

He wants to disappear up to his room and sleep for a million years. He wants to pull her upstairs with him, for them to trace patterns in the ceiling and talk about everything they’ll do post-Olympics.

 _Thirty-two days._

Beside him, she’s holding a champagne flute filled with water, twirling it between her fingers delicately. They’re not allowed to drink, not in America, but, God, he’d kill for a buzz right now.

Allie’s wearing this yellow dress, and he hates it, hates how good she looks. It feels a bit like betrayal, the feeling in his stomach, a bit like he’d ruin everything for just one moment.

“You think we can get away with leaving?” she asks, tilting her head back to look him in the eye. There’s glitter pressed into the creases of her eyelids, something pink staining her cheeks and lips. Under his gaze, she shifts to adjust the strap of her dress, and he wonders if he could get away with doing it for her.

“Maybe sneak out the back?” she continues, smiling up at him nervously, like she doesn't know what to do. He grins down at her, grabs her hand in his own, enveloping it.

“Yeah, Pressman, let’s get out of here.”

She grins back, biting the inside of her lip just barely. He thinks about Jason’s party, about his eighteenth birthday, about every other time they’ve almost kissed, every time she’s stepped back, whispered _“After the Olympics,”_ turning the real prize into something other than a gold medal.

“Where do we go?”

He pulls her with him toward an exit, both of them staring down at the floor to avoid anyone, both so bright that it’s a wonder more people aren’t watching them go. “Well,” he starts, stretching out the word until she giggles. “We can get an Uber and have it drive us to the nearest park and take full advantage of this weather before we’re stuck in Michigan again.”

“I miss the snow.”

Harry scoffs, images of snowflakes catching in her hair, of them outside the rink back in Greenwich the day he asked her to skate with him. “Of course you do, Pressman.”

Outside, everything feels a lot less claustrophobic. He feels like he can breathe again, like he’s finally able to take a deep breath and get away from the fact that their dreams are only a step away. In the breeze, her dress shifts; Allie looks even prettier out here than she did inside. 

She’s opened the Uber app on her phone, and is staring down at it while she talks. For a moment, he almost thinks that she’s avoiding his gaze. “How do you not like it?” she asks, finally looking up. She’s staring up at the sky, though, her eyes flitting between streetlamps and the stars. “How do you not like waking up in the morning and looking outside your window and just seeing an expanse of white. It’s like a blank slate, like anything could happen.”

“It melts, though,” he says, and the words sound stupid on his lips.

She still laughs. “But that’s almost the best part,” Allie says, and she’s staring at him now, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “It’s constant. You know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Every Time.”

He moves closer to her, shakes his head. “It’s cold and wet and always freezes over before it’s much fun.”

Allie rolls her eyes. “Well you are no fun at all.”

Harry stares down at her, grinning. He wonders if it’s snowing back in Canton, or even back in Greenwich. He realises that all of his good memories involving snow also very heavily feature her. Correlation doesn’t imply causation but… 

She places a hand on his arm to steady herself, and he takes another step forward. It’s like sometimes he just can’t help it, moving closer. It’s like he’s not in control, like it’s not _him_ holding her chin, pushing her hair behind her ear, sweeping an eyelash off her cheek. It’s like it’s just supposed to happen, and then it’s happening, and he can’t fucking stop it. 

They have dreams, big dreams, dreams that are thirty-two days away. He just has to wait. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

“Allie...” he says softly, delicately, faintly. It’s barely there. She can ignore it, if she wants to.

“We really shouldn’t,” she interrupts, her tongue darting out to lick the top of her lips. She almost looks scared, like she’s afraid of what might happen.

“We’re not,” he says, quickly, desperately. And, God, he hates how desperate he sounds, how her eyes shine for a second with something he can almost mistake for regret. This is how it always goes. He wishes he could make it stop.

“Then what are we doing?” Allie asks, and he can’t help it when he thinks _waiting_ almost immediately. The word tastes bitter on his tongue, cruel but true. 

Her phone buzzes, though, before he can say anything, and they both turn to watch a blue Toyota Corolla pull up to the curb. She steps back, a motion so practiced that it looks a bit like second nature.

“Just one more month,” he says softly, her back to him as she slips into the car.

“One more month,” she repeats, barely louder than a breath. 

That tastes bitter too.

  
  


-

  
  


Allie and Elle host a post-Nationals movie night at their shared apartment. Everyone’s gone by now; it’s late, the credits of a second film rolling. He shouldn’t be awake right now, not with practice so early the next morning.

Diagonal to him, Elle sits perched in an oversized armchair, studying the names as they flash on the screen. Allie’s head is resting in his lap, her breathing steady, eyes squeezed shut. She’s asleep, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, and it registers faintly, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he’d do _anything_ for a million more moments just like this one.

“Congrats on making the Olympic team,” Elle says, turning to them, her eyes flitting to Allie before falling back on his face.

“You too,” he replies, soft, afraid to wake her. She shifts closer to him with a sigh and _anything_ flashes in his mind all over again. “Are you guys rooming together?”

“Yeah, we sent in a request.”

“Think I might get stuck with Gordie,”

Elle laughs. “He’s nice, though. You know, I heard he has a thing for Allie’s sister.”

Harry’s eyebrows fly up, and Elle laughs again. “Cassandra?”

“Yeah. She’s a bit scary, isn’t she?”

He thinks about being eight, their first ever competition, and her falling. She’d been skating behind him, about to go into a twizzle, and she just _collapsed._ But he can’t remember that moment, only really knows the story, knows what he’s been told. 

“Yeah,” he replies. “She is.”

His hand is pressed against Allie’s side now, rubbing small circles into her skin. It calms her down, has since they were little. He doesn’t remember when he learned that, thinks maybe it’s just one of those things he’s always known.

“She’s really nervous, you know,” Elle says, her voice just barely above a whisper, a bit like she’s telling a secret.

“I know.” He looks up from Allie, attempting steady eye contact with Elle. “I’m nervous too.”

She looks them up and down wistfully, exhaling gently, almost a laugh. “You two are lucky, you know, to have each other. People search their entire lives for what you guys have, and you found it without even looking.”

“I know,” he repeats, and Allie shifts even closer, her hold on his shirt tightening. Faintly, he realises that he can’t remember what it felt like, skating with anyone else.

“But do you think all of this is worth it?” Elle asks, soft, so light that it almost doesn’t feel like a question. As she blinks over at him, he realises with a start that Elle must know. Elle must know about _after the Olympics,_ about how in love with Allie he is. He wonders if obvious, wonders if Allie knows too.

“I want an Olympic gold medal,” he says simply, as if it’s a fact of life. And she smiles at him, small and sad, her eyes drifting back down. 

“That’s what Allie says too.”

  
  


-

  
  


An Olympic season is like a regular season on steroids, everything brighter and sharper and more intense, everyone pushing until they’re only a step away from a breaking point. 

There’s no time for anything else but training, and it feels like he goes days sometimes without ever leaving the ice. Constantly, he has to remind himself that it’s _worth it,_ but still, sometimes he wonders… 

If they’d met at school, bumped into each other in the hallway, her books flying everywhere, him stopping to help. If they’d met at a party, red solo cups full of beer and bad decisions. God, if it had all just been a little different.

“No, no, no,” Pffiefer yells, skating out towards them, his hands thrown up in the air. “It’s like you two want to lose.”

Allie’s head is tilted back, her gaze upward, pointed at the rafters. He follows it for a second, follows it to the American flag, to their reminder. They’re representing the nation, the entirety of the United States of America. They might never get a chance like this again.

She sighs, her eyes sweeping down to stare at him, her lips pursed. “Let’s just do it again, yeah, Harry?”

Her eyes are blue, bright blue, a bit like the ocean. She told him once that they were always the first thing people noticed about her when she was little, that she hated that, hated how that’s what caught their attention. But now, he can’t help it, getting a little lost in them.

“Yeah,” he finally says, pulling himself out of his reverie. “Let’s try it again.”

Maybe if things were different, he’d have her by now, have her in all the ways he’s not allowed to even want. Maybe they’d actually stand a chance. Who _fucking_ knows.

  
  


-

They leave for Beijing in two days. 

No one will let them forget it, not Gwen and Will or are travelling with them, competing against them, rivals still, always. Not Pffiefer who asks them over and over and over again if they’ve packed their bags, like him and Allie are children who’ve never travelled before. Not his mom, or her mom either, who seem to call twice a day to _check in._

A part of him, small and sullen but still so undeniably there, almost wants it to already be over, for him to already be home, Olympic gold or not. He’s sick of waiting. He wants whatever comes next, wants to feel like he’s got a life again, instead of some feeling like he’s living in some pre-planned mess.

God, he’s just so tired.

They’ve just finished with training and Allie’s standing by the boards, slipping her skate guards on, and he swears she’s shaking, her breathing ragged and loud, her whole body stiffening as he wraps an arm around her shoulder. “You doing anything tonight, Pressman?” 

And he hates that feeling he gets in the bottom of her stomach when she leans into him, almost her full weight, like she’s taking a break, taking a breath, a moment, depending on him for everything if only for a second. 

“No,” she says, pulling herself away from him, quick enough that he doesn’t have a chance to force her to stay. “Why, you have something in mind?”

He nods. “Yeah, actually, I do.”

  
  


-

  
  


The boardwalk along Lake St Clair is empty.

It’s freezing outside, everything covered in a layer of gray slush. Behind them, hidden beneath clouds, the sun is setting, casting the sky in faded pinks and oranges and purples. She’s got both hands tucked into the pockets of her puffer, bright red and large enough that it reminds him of a pillow, but she looks happy. 

He thinks, faintly, that he wants a picture of this moment, of the _before,_ just so he can remember a time before everything changed. He can’t imagine everything not changing after the Olympics.

“You finished packing?” he asks, and she pushes him with her elbow, her face scrunching up.

“God, stop, you sound like Pffiefer.”

He laughs, studying her profile carefully, the slope of her nose, the curve of her jaw, pretending like he doesn’t spend whole days staring at her, like it’s not a part of his job. “It’s right there,” he says, softer this time than his words before. “The Olympics are _right there.”_

She sighs, shaky. “Now you sound like everyone else.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, not meaning to upset her, not now. This whole trip, the drive to the lake, was meant to do the opposite, but maybe he’s just shit at that kind of stuff right now.

“Are you scared?” she asks, adjusting how her hands sit in her pockets. She swallows, continues before he has a chance to answer. “Because I am. Fuck, Harry, I’m so scared. What if we just--”

“You ever think about what comes after?” Harry asks, cutting in gently. “Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter what happens in Beijing, because we always have the after. No matter what.”

Allie blinks up at him, stares for a moment before her words come out, slow, purposeful. “Don’t you think we only really deserve the _after_ if we have Olympic gold medals around our necks, that we haven’t really earned it otherwise?”

He thinks for a one, two, three seconds before realising that he can’t argue with that. No, she’s right.

She sighs, loudly, walks just ahead of him, staring over the edge of the boardwalk. “God, I wish that ice cream shop was open. I’d kill for a vanilla cone right now.”

He’s quiet, and she turns to face him, begs him silently to accept the subject change. He forces a smile, and she just about beams. “You’d freeze eating an ice cream cone.”

“It’d be worth it.”

  
  


-

  
  


In his car, they turn the heat up full blast and recline the seats to stare up at the sky through the glass of the sun roof.

“I still haven’t bought you those glow in the dark stars,” she jokes, and he watches as her eyes trace the outline of the sky, falling on the largest pinpricks of light they can find. 

“You’ll have to order them when we get back.”

“We can make constellations on your ceiling. Won’t even have to go outside anymore.”

Harry laughs. “Don’t think you’re getting out of our post-Olympics stargazing trip, Pressman.”

She pauses, exhales slowly, like she’s trying to maintain some semblance of control. When he turns to her, she’s still staring at the sky. “You okay, Allie?” he asks quietly, quiet enough that she can pretend she doesn’t hear him if she wants to. Passively, he doesn’t think he would mind. 

“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she admits. 

He stares at her. God, it’s been years now, but he’s still always staring. Maybe he needs to stop. “Yeah you are,” he tells her, as firm as he can be. “You’ve been ready since you were eight.”

“Imagine if it was you and me from the very start,” she muses, her eyes still fixed on some distant star. “Do you think we’d still be here?”

“Yeah, it would’ve just been a different path.”

She sighs. “I don’t think I would’ve minded that path. Sometimes… sometimes I wish I’d taken it-- we’d taken it, way back then. God, it would’ve been quite the story, huh, skating together since we were eight and nine.”

“I wouldn’t have minded it either, but if I could go back, I still wouldn’t change a thing, because we got here anyway, and what else really matters but that?” he says, and she presses her lips together, thinks for a moment.

“Yeah,” she says finally, reaching out to grab his hand. “I don’t think I would either.”

  
  


-

  
  


A list of things he likes about skating with Allie (in no particular order).

Her determination. When they can’t figure out a new skill, or when they stumble on a turn, or almost fall coming out of a lift. She won’t give up, refuses to, wakes up before the rink even opens to practice and practice and practice. He doesn’t think he’s met anyone who wants to win as badly as she does.

Her hair. It’s always everywhere, falling out of a ponytail, pieces spilling out of a bun at the nape of her neck. He likes to push it out of her face, behind her ear, away from her eyes, likes having an excuse to comb his fingers through it. She doesn’t seem to mind.

Her eyes. They’re blue, the bluest he thinks he’s ever seen. He spends entire dances staring at them, spends hours each day with her vision fixed, and he’s yet to get sick of them. He doesn’t think he ever will.

Her voice. She mumbles words of encouragement as they skate, sings along to the songs, whispers _good job_ once it’s all over. She’ll tell stories of before, back when she skated alone, tell stories of home, of Cassandra and her parents. She’ll talk about her future, how she wants to own her own rink, some place tiny where she can give lessons to little kids. _“I want other people to have what I have,”_ she’ll tell him, and he’ll wonder what he needs to do to become a part of those plans. 

Her. He likes her, Allie Pressman. He likes the way she smiles and the way she laughs and the way she always steals the last french fry. He likes listening to her breathe, the steady rise and fall of her chest in time with his. He likes having her hand in his, before skates, after skates, whenever really. He likes staring at her, likes watching her move through the world like it’s fully her own. He likes how he knows her better than he knows himself, how he thinks sometimes he can read her thoughts. It’s never been like this before, and he _likes_ that.

He wonders how he ever skated with anyone else.

  
  


-

  
  


His mom upgrades them to first class for the flight to Beijing. 

“Harry this is a five thousand dollar flight,” Allie says, waving her ticket around. “Is your mom fucking insane?”

The answer is probably yes. 

It doesn’t matter. No, they have leg room and a bed that extends all the, free wifi, and the tiniest bit of privacy. Does he feel a bit like an asshole when Gwen and Will pass by his pod? Yes. But, fuck, that shouldn’t matter either. They’re the competition. 

And in the dark, the cabin cast a dark blue, the blinds on the windows pulled down, the hum of the plane so constant that he barely even notices it, Allie reaches out, peeking her head into his pod.

“You awake, Bingham?”

He sighs, a little louder than he means to. “Yeah, Pressman.”

“This is gonna sound stupid,” she starts, and he stares over at her. “Like, really stupid.”

He doesn’t know what time it is; timezone changes really fuck him up, but it’s too late for him to even try to guess what she’s talking about. “Okay?”

“And you have to promise not to laugh,” she continues, her eyes almost comically wide.

He laughs anyway, so light that it’s more akin to an exhale, and she glares. “Spit it out, Pressman.”

“Could you hold my hand?”

“What?” he asks, blinking up at her, and she sighs, looks up at the ceiling of the cabin, studies the switches for lights and AC. 

“It’s just… I can’t sleep, like at all, no matter how hard I try, and xanax stresses me out for some reason, and I don’t fucking--”

“Sure, Allie,” he interrupts, and she smiles down at him, so soft that he almost feels like melting. “That’s fine.”

She pushes a button and a bit in the barrier between them collapses revealing an opening. If he cranes his neck, he can almost make out her profile. He thinks maybe his arm will be numb in the morning, but that doesn’t matter, no, because when he squeezes her hand, she squeezes back, once, twice, three times.

  
  


-

  
  


Allie curls into him while they watch the Opening Ceremony, fireworks going off, flashing of light and color and everywhere. It’s freezing out, even in the stadium, even surrounded by the masses of people. He thinks it’s almost his responsibility to wrap an arm around her.

Everything scares the shit out of him. This is the biggest two weeks of his life, the culmination of years of training and dedication. His social life is complete shit because of this. He doesn’t have any hobbies. No, all he has is ice dance (and Allie).

And as he stares out at the crowd, or even before, while they were walking through the stadium, all of Team USA wearing these hideous puffers, he can’t help but want that Olympic gold medal more than ever before.

It’s theirs. He’s sure of it.

  
  


-

  
  


By the time they get down to the cafeteria in USA House, all the good pastries are already gone. 

“This is all your fault,” Allie says, nudging him with her elbow, but she’s shaking, he realises, shaking as she takes the room in. 

He grabs her hand. “Sorry, Pressman, that not all of us find it easy to wake up at the crack of dawn.”

Grizz waves them down from somewhere across the room, and Allie grabs a plain croissant as they walk, splitting it in half. She offers him the larger piece, and he shakes his head no. She shrugs. _Your loss._

“Anyone want to watch the snowboarding event with me?” Jason asks just as him and Allie sit down. Her hand is still in his, and it’s a comfort, something constant that he can hold onto.

“It’s freezing out there, Alvarado,” Harry says wryly, and Jason throws a piece of toast at his head.

“Why’d you waste that?” Allie asks, her focus flitting from the toast on the ground and glaring at Jason. Her head is tilted to the side, and everyone laughs. “Stop it,” she whines. “I’m starving. And Harry took forever to get up this morning.”

He turns to shoot her an exaggerated glare. “Oh shut up, Pressman. You could’ve gone down without me.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I made a mistake.”

“You could always eat the floor toast,” Jason offers and Helena scoffs, rising from the table and pulling Allie up with her.

“You guys are all hopeless,” Helena says, shaking her head. “We’ll go grab some fruit, so we’re not all just eating empty carbs and food off the ground.”

Allie grins, beaming over at Harry, and he lets go of her hand. Luke watches as they walk away, waiting until they’re out of earshot to whisper conspiratorially, “I wanna buy a ring.”

Absolutely no one is surprised. 

“Like a wedding ring?” Jason asks, dumbly, and Lexie punches him in the shoulder. 

“What other type of ring would he be talking about?” Sometimes Harry wonders how Lexie deals with him. God, he got lucky with Allie, lucky that things fell into place like they did. It’s horrible but he’s not sure if he’d be here if it was still him and Kelly. He’s not sure how well he’d be handling any of this, if it was still him and Kelly.

They were good, but--

“Today,” Luke says, and Harry looks up at him, his eyebrows scrunched together. “I found a shop, and I want to go today, while we still have free time.”

“We?” Harry questions. 

Luke shrugs. He almost looks nervous. “Well, yeah. I can’t do it by myself.”

Lexie rolls her eyes at all of them. “Elle and I will keep Helena busy, but you can’t take too long, okay? Jason and I have practice at four.”

Luke looks around the table, his eyes falling on Jason, Harry, and Grizz each individually. Grizz is the first to speak, nodding his head firmly. “‘Course we’ll go, Luke.”

Helena and Allie return with two plates piled high with fruit. Allie makes eye contact with him, pulling a chocolate croissant out from behind her and grinning so wide that he worries it might hurt. He steals strawberries off her plate, while Lexie rants about the labor involved with growing and shipping tropical fruits to cold places during the winter. At some point, Gwen and Will join them, and they all laugh at how stupid Canada’s jackets look this year. (“So stupid,” Will agrees, and Allie tells them both off for bullying.)

Harry tries to take it all in. This might be one of their last moments together as one big _Arctic Edge Skating Club_ group. He thinks he’ll miss it once it’s gone, miss how easy it is to forget about everything else. Everything will be different after the Olympics, and people already know.

  
  


-

  
  


The earrings are in the display case closest to the door. 

They’re delicate, tiny, pale pearls attached to rose gold. He’s buying them, spending half of the money he got converted, before he’s even fully registered what he’s doing. Luke is somewhere nearby, searching through the cases with Grizz and Jason for the _perfect ring._ Searching searching searching, while the cashier hands Harry a small box made of blue crushed velvet. 

He adds _giving them to her_ to his list of post-Olympic plans. 

All of the plans are related to her anyway, what’s one more going to do?

  
  


-

  
  


His jacket looks a bit like the patriotic puke, but he still finds himself wearing it everywhere. More often than not, Allie is following behind him, their hands clasped and swinging, all nervous energy.

He never thought it was possible to be _this_ stressed, but it obviously is.

Really, they’re surrounded by stress.

Gordie won’t stop talking, and Elle won’t start. Luke spends all of his time watching tapes, and Grizz is won’t stop texting someone from back home. Will keeps cooking things, and Gwen keeps flirting with Canadian speed skaters. Helena keeps a bible on her, Lexie crystals, Jason an old hockey puck.

He and Allie fill their time going to every event possible. They have a fucking spreadsheet full of times and overlap. _“If we leave midway through the first women’s hockey match, we can make it to the men's curling final.”_ and _“We can watch snowboarding from the monitors next to the arena for pairs skating.”_

It’s not healthy, and he realises that, but it’s something to do. If he tries hard enough, he can almost forget why he’s here, can almost forget that they compete in less than a week, that single performance is about to represent a decade of work.

 _They’re ready._ He needs to remember that.

  
  


-

  
  


The night before their Olympic free dance, he lays beside her on the floor of her hotel room.

Elle’s asleep a room over, and the lights are all off. If he looks out her window, he knows he’ll see an Olympic flame, constantly illuminated, a reminder of where they are. But Allie and Elle keep their blinds closed at all times, a bit like they want to forget.

“We’re almost there,” he says, more to himself than her. _One day._

“You have that list ready?” Allie whispers, her breathing shaky as they stare at the ceiling. 

“‘Course, Pressman.” 

“Good,” she says, and he almost can’t hear the fear in her voice. Maybe if it wasn’t him, if he didn’t know her so well, if he wasn’t the one always laying beside her on the floor of hotel rooms, he wouldn’t even know it was there. “‘cause we’ve got this. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be Olympic gold medalists.”

 _“Pressman and Bingham, the greatest ice dancers to ever live._ It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

She laughs, a barely there exhale that reminds him of a breeze. Winter, of course, because it’s her. “Yeah, it does.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he repeats.

  
  


-

  
  


He’s already in his costume, waiting for her make-up to be done, shaking so bad he’s afraid he won’t be able to stand up for long. 

Will and Gwen are on the ice right now, and he’s afraid to watch, purposefully avoiding the monitors. He can still hear the crowd, though, clapping every time they hit a skill. He can hear their music, has heard it a million times before, seen their program enough that he’s just about got it memorised.

It’s shit for his nerves.

He tries breathing, a series of shit exercises that Helena recommended. He tries stretching, bending his legs in a thousand different directions, rolling his shoulders, swinging his arms. He tries listening to music, eyes closed, some Frank Ocean song that he can barely make out the lyrics of. 

And his eyes are closed when she grabs his hand, holding on so tight he thinks it might break.

“We’ve got this, Harry.”

And the lyrics are clear now _...I thought that I was dreaming when you said you love me..._ clear as he opens his eyes, clear as she appears in front of him. He feels a bit like he can breathe again.

She sinks into him when he wraps his arms around her, and holding her close, he swears their heartbeats line up, line up until it’s almost like they’re just one person. When they pull apart, just barely, just far enough that she can look up at him, her hand resting against his jaw, fingers tracing the edge of his cheek. 

God, she looks beautiful, even would without the shimmer on her eyelids, the red of her lips and cheeks. She looks beautiful and nervous and excited, and he swears he can hear a waltz somewhere off in the distance, knows it’s imagined this time, even if it wasn’t always before.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispers, blinking down at her once, twice, three times. She doesn’t speak.

Their first kiss, in a hidden corner backstage at the Olympics, feels almost like a mistake. And when she pulls away, her lips are still parted in a tiny _o,_ she’s shaking her head ever so slightly, back and forth, over and over… _The start of nothing..._

It does nothing to help his nerves.

  
  


-

  
  


In the end, it’s less than one tenth of a point. That’s what separates them from gold.

  
  


-

  
  


He hates the view from the second step of the podium.

Allie’s not looking at him, her smile is so tight that he’s afraid she’ll shatter at any moment, crumble into too many pieces to pick up. Her focus is distant, faraway, on some distant point off in the crowd-- Cassandra, maybe, sitting up in the stands. He thinks she looks sick. 

He feels sick. 

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. No, it was supposed to be _them_ on the top step, gold medals and cameras flashing while the Star Spangled Banner played. He’d cry, maybe, looking over at her. God, she’d be crying too, but happy, so fucking happy. 

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The silver around his neck feels like some sort of joke, a weak consolation prize. He wants to throw the flowers back onto the ice, never wants to be in this arena again.

But somehow, the worst part is looking up and seeing Gwen and Will. They’re beaming, adjusting the gold around their necks so it catches in the light. And he wonders when they knew that they’d won, if it was after him and Allie finished skating, while they walked over to the kiss and cry with Pffiefer, their hearts burning holes in their chests, their hands clasped tight, or if it was before that, before him and Allie even stepped foot on the ice. 

Harry wonders if they lost the gold the second his lips touched hers.

  
  


-

  
  


His medal comes off the second he gets backstage. 

It’s stuffed in his Team USA sports bag, buried under extra warm-ups, pushed as far away as he can get it. 

He doesn’t bother with a mumbled _congratulations_ to Will and Gwen, doesn’t bother because he thinks Allie’s already gone through with it. He watches her hug Gwen, watches her paste some fake smile on her face, one that doesn’t even come close to reaching her eyes. They all smile for more pictures, more flashing lights until the photographers are pushed away by security.

Her medal isn’t around her neck either. No, she’s weighing it in her hands, staring down at it, and he can almost hear the _was it worth it?_ playing over and over in her mind. He doesn’t have an answer for the question yet, doesn’t think he ever will.

He sits down beside her on the bench, reaches for her hand, squeezes it once, twice, three times. She doesn’t squeeze back. God, he feels like he’s eight again, feels just like how he did when Cassandra fell, on the way to the hospital when the words _your fault_ hung high in the air. He feels like he’s eight, holding onto Allie’s hand while it snows, his heart out on his sleeve just asking to be broken.

He feels defeated.

When she finally glances up at him, tired, hollow, so fucking _done,_ he wonders if she’s thinking the same thing he is. 

Maybe if they’d just waited. Maybe if they’d followed through, if they hadn’t broken the rules. Maybe if Kelly never left, if Will didn’t end it. Maybe if Cassandra hadn’t gotten sick. 

_Maybe if, maybe if, maybe if_ over and over and over again. 

  
  


-

  
  


Elle comes in fourth, Helena second. The US Men’s Hockey Team third. Lexie and Jason fifth. Gordie wins gold but Harry tells himself that doesn’t matter. 

It’s all varying shades of bitter defeat. 

He goes out with Luke and Grizz, thankful the legal drinking age in China is eighteen. Him and Allie don’t spend any more nights on hotel room floors. Really, he’s not sure what she’s doing. 

The pearl earrings burn a hole in his pocket, but he ignores them. The rest of the list has gone to shit anyway, what’s the point in even trying?

  
  


-

  
  


She’s sitting outside the door to his room, a miniature bottle of vodka clutched in one hand.

“Allie?” he says softly, like he’ll disturb her if his voice is at a normal volume. She tilts her head back to look at him, eyes rimmed red, a deep set frown on her face.

“We fucked up, Harry. We fucked everything up. We said we wouldn’t, and then we did.”

He sits down beside her. “I know.”

“You know what the worst part is?” she asks, and there are tears in her eyes now, turning the blue glassy and bright. “Sometimes I don’t regret it at all. Sometimes I think that if someone gave me the chance, I’d--” she exhales sharply, swiping at her face. “I’d do it all over again. I wouldn’t even fucking hesitate.”

He realises with a start that he doesn’t regret it either, that she was worth it, even if it was only for a half a second. She was worth all of it.

And Allie’s right, that is the worst part.

  
  


-

  
  


The media asks the same questions a million different ways. 

They think that they know them, that because they know bits and pieces of a pre-packaged story, that they’re in on some joke. They think that they know him, know him because of the answers he gives in interviews, his face in the kiss and cry, calculated, thinking. 

They think that they know her, know her because of her smile, the one she practices in the mirror at the rink, the one she gives when she’s pissed off but supposed to hide it. The one she gives when she’s disappointed.

The media thinks it’s all some sort of fairytale, that because they met _when she was four and he was five,_ that everything just fits together in some neat little package. They think that it just happened.

“So are you dating?” they ask, over and over again. And it’s like a blow to the chest every single time, a reminder as she says, her laugh light and twinkling and practiced.

_“Oh no, never.”_

In those big rooms, conference rooms, while they wear Team USA jackets and act like they’re friends, proper friends with Will and Gwen, her answers become even tighter, starting to sound like excuses.

_“We’ve known each other for so long. He’s my best friend.”_

Those hurt even more.

But the worst ones don’t come until later, until they’re nearing the end. And it’s later when he hears her say, _“It builds trust,”_ to a reporter who holds their phone just a little too close to catch whatever Allie’s about to admit, her words so soft that he thinks it still might not work. _“Being so in sync that it’s like you don’t even need to speak. Most people go their whole lives without ever feeling that close to anyone, and we got lucky. We found it.”_

The worst ones leave him wondering how much is for the media, and how much he gets to keep. He’s afraid of the answer, just like he’s afraid of most other things post-Beijing.

  
  


-

  
  


They fly business class on the way home, elbows brushing on the shared armrest, and a new neck pillow, plain and gray, twenty dollars at a gift shop, behind him.

His xanax is wearing off when she taps his shoulder. The fluffy blanket is at their feet; she’s wearing a nike hoodie and sweats. He wonders if she’s still cold; she’d always get cold on long flights. 

“We’re competing at Worlds, right?” she asks, rushed, like she’d been waiting forever to ask. 

And if he’s being honest, he hasn’t thought about skating, about them skating, about their future, properly since standing on the second level of the podium. His answer comes out soft, softer than he wants, but that doesn’t really matter. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

He stares at her. She tied her hair back, brought it out away from her face. And they’ve got seven hours left on the flight. The rest of the cabin is dark. She should be asleep. “Then yeah, we’re competing at Worlds.”

She pauses, swallows something down, biting the inside of her lip. “And after?”

“What do you mean?” he breathes out, shifting in his seat until he’s fully angled towards her.

“Do you wanna retire? Do you want a new partner, someone better or--”

“No,” he interrupts, and she blinks over at him, her eyes travelling around his face like she’s searching for something. “It’s always going to be you and me, Pressman. No matter what.”

She offers him the faintest of smiles. “Okay.”

When he reaches for her hand, grabs it, squeezes, she squeezes back. As his eyes shut again, he realises that this is his biggest fear, another four years of them running around each other like it’s nothing.

But, God, he’d still do it. Yeah, he’d do just about anything for her.

  
  


-

  
  


In the airport lobby, while waiting for their Uber, he pulls the earrings out of his bag. 

He hasn’t looked at them since he bought them, only passing the box back and forth between bags. They’d stayed on his hotel dresser for a little while, in his back pocket, stuffed in his bag right next to a silver medal. 

“Saw them in a shop and thought of you,” he says, pushing the box into her hands and regretting it almost immediately. He wonders why he’s so _fucking stupid,_ why he chose now, of all times, to give them to her, why here, side by side at the airport, people pushing past them, instead of her birthday. Or even Christmas, if he was feeling a bit masochistic, keeping the box in his pocket for practically a whole year, a clear reminder of everything they just barely missed.

“Oh,” she says, staring down at them. She opens the box, dark blue crushed velvet, and picks one of the pearls up, delicately rolling it between two fingers. “When did you get them?”

He hesitates. Beijing is over now, thirteen hours away by plane. There’s a silver medal stuffed deep down in his bag, but maybe one day he can forget about that. Maybe one day he’ll move on. 

“Forever ago,” he finally says, and she looks up at him. From her eyes and the way she smiles, just barely there, so faint he has to search for it, he thinks she already knows. 

“Thanks, Harry. They’re beautiful.”

He exhales. “Of course.”

A month later, at Worlds in France, they win by twelve points. She’s wearing the earrings. He hates how much he cares.

  
  


-

  
  


It’s Luke’s party, but Helena’s the one who welcomes him inside.

Someone’s music is on shuffle, random songs playing as he flirts with some girl from the rink, letting her stand too close and play with the edge of his shirt while they talk. She’s got brown hair and an easy smile, and for a second he thinks that might just be a good idea. Only a second, though. 

And so he’s in Luke’s kitchen, searching through the freezer for vodka so he can make one of those sweet drinks, some signature cocktail an older skater taught him forever ago, when he runs into Allie.

“Oh, hey Harry,” she breathes out, moving to stand beside him. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

“Didn’t know you were either,” he says, casually, just as she pulls a Digiorno pizza out of the freezer.

She catches his stare and rolls her eyes. “Dominos just closed and people are starving out there.”

“So you’re gonna be their knight in shining armor?”

Allie laughs. “That’s the plan at least.”

He’s got some stupid half smirk on his face, his head tilted to the side. “And after that?”

She sets the pizza box on the counter, moving a step closer to him, so close now that he can feel her breath hot on his neck. “I don’t know. I’ll probably just go home.”

There’s some Taylor Swift song playing, one from back when she had frizzy hair and a country accent… _untouchable burning brighter than the sun, and when you’re close I feel like coming undone._ And he’s got his hand on her waist now, fingers grazing her skin, rubbing smooth circles over and over.

It’s like before, before when their dreams were still intact, bright, shimmering things that stood off in the horizon. Before, before they stood on the second step of the podium, the silver feeling more like a noose than a reward. Before, before when he thought they could do _anything,_ that they just had to wait a little longer. God, hasn’t it already been long enough?

He leans down, slowly, carefully, noses brushing, and she gasps, a light exhale. 

“Harry,” she whispers, and he already thinks he knows what’s coming. “I don’t think we--”

His eyes narrow as he steps back, far enough that he can see she’s still holding a red solo cup, her grip so sharp that the sides are pressed in. “So we’re just going to do this for another four years?” he asks. His eyes flit from her face to her hair to her eyes, and aloud, the words sound cruel, but in his head, they’re laced so heavy with desperation that they feel like a weight against his chest. 

“God, Harry,” she snaps, the beer in her cup jostling as she moves with him. He wants to take it from her, to down it in one go and grab another. “We lost. We lost by a tenth of a point because we weren’t fucking good enough, because we were stupid and made a fucking _mistake.”_ She looks a lot like she’s about to cry, like she’s about to break down in the middle of Luke’s kitchen. 

“Don’t you want it?” she asks, softer this time, her eyes fixed on his. She’s searching again, searching for something she’s not sure she’ll find. “Don’t you want a gold medal? Don’t you want proof that this was all worth it?”

He wants to yell about the other things he wants, how he wants _her_ more than any gold medal, how it’s already worth it, maybe, at least could be if she just wanted it to. 

He doesn’t, though, no, he steps forward, the pad of his thumb on her cheek, wiping a tear away. She swallows, and he nods, once, twice… “Yeah, I want it.”

  
  


-

  
  


From the roof of the apartment building, Harry swears they can make out pieces of the Detroit skyline.

He’s dragged her up there to watch the sunset, their first clear day in weeks. It’s unseasonably warm, comfortable enough for hoodies. This is his favorite time of the year.

“One day we’re going to get caught up here,” she tells him, her arms resting up against the concrete wall. “And we’ll have to find another spot to watch the sunset from.”

“Would that really be so bad?”

Allie shrugs. “It’s nice up here. Might be my favorite part of Canton.”

“Mine too.”

“We can handle four more years, right?” she asks suddenly, blinking up at him. Her eyes are as bright as the stars, so sharp that they look a little like diamonds.

“We’ll have to, won’t we?”

She looks down, her eyes following a car as it passes, then another, and another. “Yeah. I guess we will.”

“But we have summer first,” he says firmly. The sunset has painted everything golden, spilling out across the horizon. It makes everything feel like a painting, makes him want a picture of the moment. He wants to remember how it feels to be at peace, if even it’s only for a moment.

“Cass asked me if I wanted to spend the summer in Europe with her,” Allie tells him softly, blinking over at the sky, studying it, how the colors have exploded everywhere. It takes him a moment to process what she’s just said, and when he finally does, it feels a bit like the final nail in the coffin of _after the Olympics._

“And you said yes?” he asked, hesitantly. They had plans, before, big plans, lists of things they’d do. That’s all gone now. He needs to realise that.

She swallows, pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Not yet.”

It’s unspoken but so loud, the _ask me to stay,_ and he wants to, wants to whisper it, wants to yell it, wants to say it over and over and over again. But he can’t, no, he can’t. It’s all gone now, everything they’d worked for. It’s all wrapped up in silver, hidden in his sock drawer.

So he tells her, as firmly as he possibly can, pushing away the shakiness, “You should go.”

She blinks over at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Allie,” he repeats, and now he almost believes himself. “You should go.”

She smiles at him, small and sad, leans a little closer. “You’re my best friend, Harry. You know that, right?” she says, her head tilted just barely to the side.

“Yeah, Pressman. You’re mine too,” he says, wrapping an arm tight around her shoulder. She sinks into it. He pauses, stares down at her. “I’m leaving for home in a few days.”

“Connecticut?”

He nods. “Yeah. I’m driving, so that my car is down there during our break. You--” this feels like a mistake. “ You wanna come with me?”

“I...” She’s biting the inside of her lip, thinking, and he wonders if this is another one of those moments where she shakes her head, back and forth, taking a step back, bitterly thinking that this is something he has to _earn_ too, but then she asks, so soft that he has to strain to hear, “You wouldn’t mind me tagging along?”

“No,” he breathes out. “‘course not.”

“Then I’d love to.”

It feels like a mistake. He doesn’t care. No, not at all, not with her still pressed close, beaming down at the city, and Harry doesn’t care that he’s tired, and cold, the wind everywhere, the street loud, and the sun almost gone, doesn’t care because--

Because it’s kind of nice, just standing up there with her.

  
  


-

  
  


They leave in the morning, just as the sun is starting to rise. 

He helps her load her bags into the back of his car, and they spend ten minutes trying to push one of her suitcases down far enough to get the trunk to close.

She puts the directions into her phone, breaking the drive up into little pieces, planning stops along the way in the notes app of her phone. He forces her to write in a stop at a motel an hour east of Pittsburgh.

“You think the weather will be nice enough for us to swim in one of the lakes?” she asks, her feet resting up on the dash. He doesn’t tell her to move them. 

“Probably not.”

Her face scrunches up. “What about ice cream?”

“Sure, Pressman.”

They eat ice cream down by some pier near Lake Erie, sitting side by side on a wooden beam, a shared cup of vanilla because they’re both boring. He keeps dipping his fingers in it, and she keeps hitting him with the back of her spoon, and laughing, God, she’s laughing so much.

“What are you going to do this summer?” she asks, her spoon scraping the bottom on the cup.

“Not sure yet. My mom wants to go back to the Bahamas but I kinda want to be home.”

“I never thought I’d miss West Ham,” she admits. “But it’s sorta nice there, comforting.”

“Do you think you’d ever move back?”

“Maybe one day but-- but not any time soon.” She offers him a tight smile, pushing herself to her feet. He stands up with her. “Four more years, right?”

“Right.”

  
  


-

  
  


There are two beds in the hotel room. 

He knows that, had called in days ago, the second he knew she was coming with him, but still, a part of him worried that something would get fucked up anyway. He can’t handle sleeping beside her, not right now.

They check in at three, dropping off their bags, but then go exploring the area, some small suburbia complete with a brick lined downtown, and a fountain in a bright green park. They eat dinner at a diner, the food greasy and good and everything they weren’t allowed to have for the past year, and walk around until the streetlamps start to switch on.

Back in the hotel room, they sit side by side on her bed and watch the sixth _Harry Potter_ movie because it’s playing on _Freeform._ She’s yawning by the time Snape kills Dumbledore, and they’ve both slipped in pajamas by the time the credits are rolling.

And he settles into his own bed, leaving her side as the lights are switched off, the moon shining bright through the window. He lays there for a little while, ignores the silence, traces patterns into the ceiling with his eyes, spelling out words. She still hasn’t bought glow in the dark stars, but now doesn’t feel like the right time to bring that up.

God, he can’t fucking sleep. She’s just so close, feet away, right _there._ She’s always been so close, right from the start, only far enough away for it to matter. And everything’s been ruined, he knows that, knows that they’re trying to fix things, set themselves up for the next four years, but--

“Is it okay if I sleep next to you,” she asks, interrupting, a bit like she’s reading his mind. She’s sitting up, the covers shifting, the room suddenly feeling loud, and he hates how she sounds nervous, scared, so delicate that he worries she might crumble if he said no. “I just can’t sleep, and maybe--”

“Sure, Allie. That’s fine.” 

The bed dips and the covers shift, and they’re suddenly close enough to touch, close enough that he’d barely have to move to grab her hand, and maybe that’s almost worse than before. 

It’s silent for a moment, heavy and loud. He can hear her breathing, can make out her profile in the dark, the moon casting the whole room blue.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she whispers slowly, like she can’t help it, like it’s been weighing on her mind.

“For what?”

It's silent before a moment. “I think I’m complete shit at change,” she finally admits, soft enough that he almost thinks it's just to herself. 

He pauses, wonders if she knows that he’s complete shit at change too, wonders if that’s their problem. “That’s okay.”

Harry doesn’t fall asleep until her breathing turns steady, and when he wakes up, just as the sun is beginning to rise, she’s curled up against him, her head pressed to his chest.

He lets himself have this, because this is all he’s ever really going to get. 

  
  


-

  
  


They reach West Ham by mid-afternoon, the sun bright and the sky clear. Allie’s playing a Lorde song on Spotify... _I’d like it if you stayed._

“So Europe, huh?” he prompts, and she nods. She looks excited, beaming just at the mention. He can’t help but grin back. 

“Yeah,” she starts, shifting in the seat. They’re approaching her street, everything turning familiar. “It’ll be nice to actually see places besides ice rinks and seedy hotel rooms.”

“I hope you have fun,” he says sincerely, firmly, resolutely, and when she blinks up at him, he swears he sees something close to regret flash through her eyes.

“Me too.”

He pulls up to the curb in front of her house, the car slowing to a stop, and she smiles at him, so softly that he can feel his breath catch in his throat. “Have a good summer, Bingham.”

He stares at her. God, he’s always staring at her. “You too, Allie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol unnecessary and very much not subtle parallels are my favorite.
> 
> hope you liked this chapter! one more left (maybe?)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can make out the gold flecks in his eyes, every single one of them. They remind her more of stars than medals, like little pinpricks of light.
> 
> -
> 
> _or harry and allie and the year after the olympics_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took over a month. hopefully the fact that it's 16k words will sorta make up for that.
> 
> also, a big big thanks to [backfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire) / [dystopians](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing this for me. it really does mean the world!
> 
> (another also, remember when i said this would be the last chapter. yeah. so do i.)

**PART FOUR. (the mistake)**

-

**between.**

-

She was four, and he was five. 

Everyone knows the story now, the reporters and the fans and the commentators at every single competition they go to. Everyone likes to remember how things almost started.

She hears it again and again and again and just wants it to _fucking stop._

Or maybe she doesn’t. God, she’s not really sure what she wants anymore.

-

**v.**

-

Allie doesn’t even make it to the airport. 

Her bags are packed, thrown in the back of a cab because she didn’t want her parents to have to take time off work to drive her. And Cass is already there, already in Europe with some friends from Yale. _I’ll meet you at Heathrow._

Allie never makes it to Heathrow. 

But the Bingham residence, complete with its circular driveway, arching front door, and six car garage-- yeah, she makes it there.

-

She stands outside the door for almost a full minute before ringing the doorbell.

Her bags are right beside her, that suitcase, the big one that she always takes to competitions, sitting on the steps. God, Cassandra would’ve attacked her for it, would’ve laughed and said _you’re not going to need all of that stuff,_ but Allie’s always thought that there was a bit of a comfort to material things. Now, she feels stupid, stupid standing outside his door, stupid with her sweats and her hoodie and her heart hanging right on the end of her sleeve. 

He might not even be home. It’s nearly eight; she had a red eye flight, was going to sleep the entire time. It’s nearly eight and he could be out, out with friends, out at a bar with a fake ID. His birthday isn’t until late September, but he always said he could pass as older than he was. 

Harry could be gone. 

It’s weird to even think about that, hard for her to imagine because he’s _always_ right there beside her. Sometimes, before Beijing, she’d consider asking him why he was always there with her, always there for her, but she hadn’t wanted to think of any alternative, so the question never really fully formed. 

Now, later, the first time he might not be there, God, she regrets not asking.

-

(She should know by now that he’s always going to be there for her.)

-

He answers the door ten seconds after she rings the doorbell. She counts the seconds, counts down from twenty, promises herself that she’ll leave, call a taxi because Uber isn’t set up in the area yet, if he doesn’t appear by the time she reaches zero. She promises herself that she’ll leave, try to catch that flight to London, let this just become some story, some memory that feels faded enough to have just been a dream.

But no, he’s right there.

“Allie?” he asks, stepping outside. She backs up as he moves closer to her, almost afraid that she’ll fall. The sun is setting, always seems to be setting at the worst moments. Everything is golden, and she’s afraid that the filter, the tinge of the hour, will be ruined for her if the wrong things are said.

“Hey,” she mumbles, nervous, shaking.

“Are you--?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” That sounds like a lie. It feels a bit like one too, feels like a lie when she thinks about where she is, what she’s doing. She can’t be _okay,_ not if she’s standing here, next to him. She always goes back to him-- every time. And he’s always there, even though he probably shouldn’t be.

He stares at her, squints a little in the light. “Then why are you here, Allie?”

That’s the question she was afraid of, the question she was asking herself the entire way here, the question she was trying to ignore, trying to avoid when she forced her cab driver to turn around halfway to Bradley International. This is the question she’s not even sure she knows the answer to, not fully, at least.

“I was in the back of a cab,” she says slowly. That’s not how it starts, though, not really. No, it starts before that, before when they were in Greenwich floating just barely in each others’ orbit. It starts when they’re four and five, just like everyone says, or when they’re eight and nine and he says no, when he says he doesn’t want to skate with her. It starts when she realises that he’s the only person who’s ever really always been there for her. Yeah, it starts there. “And I realised I _missed_ you so much that it just about hurt, and I realised I couldn’t handle weeks on a different continent, that I-- I didn’t want to go, and…”

“I just thought--” she stares up at him, lets out a shaky exhale. She feels like she’s made of glass, like at any moment she could crack, crumble under the pressure of him. Crumble under the pressure of them. “We’re on a break, right? So whatever happens, it doesn’t count, right? Because right here, right now, for the next two months, it doesn’t matter what we do because-- because we’re not Olympic athletes right now, right?” she asks, and God, she sounds so fucking desperate. She hates this, hates how she feels desperate, hates how she feels like she’s just making excuses so that they have a reason to fuck everything up all over again. She hates how she wants them to fuck everything up.

“Allie,” he starts, and she can hear it, can hear the uncertainty, the regret, the everything. _After the Olympics,_ he’d said, over and over and over again until it just about broke her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, as firmly as she can, and it’s a bit like she’s convincing herself too. “Two months, okay? We get two months to do whatever we want.”

He steps towards her, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. One hand is grazing her face, tracing over freckles from the sun, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He’s shaking. “Two months?”

She swallows, gives him the faintest nod. “Two months.”

She can make out the gold flecks in his eyes, every single one of them. They remind her more of stars than medals, like little pinpricks of light. 

The second time they kiss, outside his house as the sun bleeds into the sky, she thinks, faintly, that _this is how the story was always supposed to go._

-

Kissing Harry is strange. 

It’s everything she thought it would’ve been, before, back when their dreams were just glittering things off in the distance. It’s like it was meant to be, something bright and perfect. For a second, she thinks that it all was worth it, every single bad decision, if only for this one moment. And she knows, knows that she really would do it all over again, rewind time, just to get to this place, standing close to him outside his childhood home. She thinks that he would too.

“You wanna come inside?” he asks, pulling away, this half smirk on his face, his head tilted just barely to the side. It’s charming; it always has been.

“You won’t mind?”

He shakes his head, lifts up her suitcase and pushes it through the door. She hates how much she likes where this is going. “Never.”

She just wants two months, that’s it. She just wants them to feel normal, wants everything to be normal. She wants to pretend like they’re something they’re not, like she’s not depending on him, on them, for her entire future. 

And she just wants this moment, where everything feels right, to last forever. It’s summer. Maybe that feeling’s okay.

-

Standing in the front hall, surrounded by family pictures-- a young Harry at the Greenwich rink on top of the podium with a partner she doesn’t recognize, Sarah at kindergarten graduation, a family portrait done before Mr. Bingham passed-- Allie hovers over her sister's contact. If she doesn’t press it, if she tells Harry to bring her stuff back downstairs, if she calls a cab and just leaves, then all of this isn’t really real.

She wants it to be real. _Two months._

She calls her sister.

“Cass, I’m not coming to Europe.”

Over the phone, Cassandra sighs, the sound loud and crackly. She wonders how much this call costs. “I figured this might happen. You’re okay, right?”

Allie leans against the wall. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m--” she takes a deep breath, a pause. “I’m staying with him.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah.”

Cassandra laughs. “Makes sense. Just… just promise me you won’t do anything stupid, okay?”

There’s a picture of her and Harry hung up, post Nationals, that year they won when everyone was there, that year she sat beside Cassandra in the restaurant and was told that they _could go all the way._ She wants to go back to that, misses that feeling of her dreams being something distant, something only barely tangible. 

“So you're not mad that I’m just bailing on our trip?”

Her sister laughs again, softer this time. “We can do the trip some other time.”

“Cass--”

“Really, we can do it some other time,” her sister repeats. Allie tries to breathe.

“I feel like I’m making another mistake, like--”

“Remember after the Olympics?” Cassandra cuts in gently. “Right before I left, when you said that you guys had fucked up, made a mistake? And then at Worlds, when you called me after you won by twelve points, _twelve fucking points,_ and you said that everything still felt wrong. Doesn’t this also feel a bit like a chance to fix all of that? And if it is, God, Allie, I’m not going to get in the way.

“You and Harry could be really great together. And you’ve been avoiding it for so long, but… this is chance, Allie, and you should take it.”

There’s a tear running down her cheek, but she doesn’t even notice it until her vision blurs. That picture of them, them happy and excited and hopeful, falls out of focus. “I’m sorry, Cass.”

“Don’t be, Al. It’s okay. I promise.”

She takes a deep breath, swipes at the tears and pulls her gaze away from the wall. Faintly, she can hear Harry in the kitchen. She wonders if he’s making something. 

“I love you.”

Over the phone, Cassandra sighs, and it sounds something like relief. “Love you too, Allie.”

-

Harry’s making dinner, heating up a frozen pizza, throwing together a small salad. Maybe she should be helping. It doesn’t matter.

She’s sitting on one of the stools next to the kitchen counter, watching him, her phone held out in front of her, at such an angle that he keeps thinking she’s taking pictures of him. And she was, right at the start, when he grinned at her while she poured them both glasses of wine, a little too much wine, and not the cheap stuff either, not the boxed stuff that always ends up at those parties they’d go to back in Canton.

She’s not taking pictures of him right now.

They have two months. She buys herself a plane ticket back to Michigan before she can get even more caught up in it all. She doesn’t tell him.

-

The pool is cold.

It’s dark out, the moon in a crescent somewhere behind a tree and about a million stars way up above. There are more out here than in Canton. She’d never realised that before. 

Her feet are in the pool, but her back is on the cement, him beside her as they stare up at the sky. Their shoulders are brushing, their hands touching, but all of that happens so often now, all of that is so normal that she doesn’t even really take note of it. She wonders when that change happened.

“I have that telescope in my room,” he tells her. “I could bring it down.”

“Do you think we really need it? We could always just point and make up constellations, right?”

“I promised I’d take you stargazing once--” he starts, and she can hear it in his voice, how he’s about to mention _before._ And that she doesn’t want to think about that right now. No, she doesn’t want to think about that at all. That’s why she’s here. That’s not why they’re here.

“I think this counts,” she cuts in softly. “I mean, we are looking up at the sky. It doesn’t really take much more than that.”

Harry’s silent for a second before lifting his arm up and pointing at the sky. “Those are shaped a little like an orange,” he says, and Allie lets out a half snort without even realising. 

“An orange? You mean a circle?”

And he’s grinning over at her, not looking at the sky, not anymore, and she’s grinning back because it’s like this with him. It’s easy with him. 

“It’s definitely an orange, Pressman.”

She can’t stop staring at him, at how bright he is. She’s always thinking that, thinking about how he’s all light, sparkling, shining. “Maybe,” she says slowly. “Maybe we do need that telescope.”

“Yeah?” Harry asks, and when she nods he stands up, offers her his hand. He doesn’t let go, no, doesn’t let go as he pulls her inside, doesn't let go as they’re walking up the stairs, down the hallway, into his room. His room.

And he’d put her stuff in a guest room, right at the front like it’s just waiting to be moved. _It is,_ she thinks, just waiting to be moved. It’s going to be moved to the room next door, to his room. It’s going to be pushed into the corner and unpacked slowly until her shirts are on top of his dresser, his hoodies draped over her. Yeah, that was kind of the plan.

His room is a dark blue, has an en suite and a balcony and these windows that seem to go on forever. He has a view of the back garden, can see the tops of trees off in the distance. His bed, the covers plaid and soft, is right there, and she’s sitting down, and he’s across the room grabbing the telescope, pushing it towards her, and she’s laughing again, laughing because it’s a bit funny, how she can only barely see him, how the only light in the room is from a lamp in the corner, switched on as an afterthought, how the moon is right there, right outside the window. And she’s laughing, and he’s laughing too, moving closer and closer and--

“I’m really happy you’re here, Allie,” he says. She can feel his breath on her face, their foreheads just barely touching. He’s got his hand on her cheek, warm and familiar, and it feels a bit like how they ended their free dance last season, staring into the other eyes, her hand against his chest, his to her cheek. She can’t help it, thinking about that even if she’s trying so desperately hard to create a separation between that life and this moment.

“Me too.”

Her heart is beating loud in her chest, and his lips are against hers, warm and soft and familiar somehow, familiar already, just like the rest of him. God, he’s so fucking familiar.

He shifts closer to her, that telescope forgotten. It almost feels wrong, star gazing, because it was never _after the Olympics._ No, it was _after we’re gold medalists_ and those two promises were never interchangeable. 

“This is okay, right?” he asks. His hand is under her top, warm against her skin, pressed into her waist, just above her hip, drifting down slowly.

Her exhale is so light that she barely notices it herself, barely feels the breath leave. She swallows. “We’ll be okay, after this?” she asks, ignoring his question. He leans into her.

Harry doesn’t say anything. She thinks he mistakes her words for some statement, for an answer. She doesn’t mind. She wants them to be okay. She wants that to be the answer.

-

She’s nineteen and he’s twenty, and they’re--

They’re not thinking this through. They’re not thinking about the future, about what happens next. They’re not thinking about Canton, about gold medals, about ruining things. They’re not thinking about how much this feels like a mistake, like a secret, like something that should’ve stayed an idea. They’re not thinking about how she’s supposed to be in London right now, about how she’s in his childhood bedroom instead.

But she doesn’t think at all when he pulls even closer, doesn’t think when she bites down on his upper lip, when he groans, when his fingers are pressed into her hip, against her skin, warm, always warm. She doesn’t think as she sinks into the comforter, doesn’t think as he hovers over her, his eyes wide like he can’t believe this is really happening. She doesn’t think about that ache, deep down, the way he feels against her. She doesn’t think--

She doesn’t think at all. No, they’re not thinking this through.

-

They don’t wake up until eleven, and he makes them pancakes for breakfast. They eat out in the back garden, and his lips taste like maple syrup. He tells her that she tastes like strawberries.

And she could get used to this. She could get used to this so quickly. That worries her.

-

The top of his car is down, her hair flying everywhere, a _Stokes_ song playing a little too loud, something old… _promises, they break before they’re made…_

It’s a two and a half hour drive to the Hamptons, meant to just be a day trip, them checking up on his family's house, walking along the edge of a private beach, getting ice cream, watching the sun set. 

Only, after all of that, after Harry splashes her with water, after the ice cream melts down her hand, after they’ve switched on the lights in the house and shaken the dust off of an old family portrait, they fall asleep on the couch, her head on his chest, a movie somewhere in the background, Allie decides she doesn’t want to leave.

Harry doesn’t object.

They spend too much money in tiny boutiques buying what’s practically a whole new wardrobe just so they don’t have to go back to his house for their things. She likes to throw shirts at him, those button downs he always wears. Harry forces dresses into her hands, flowy things made of light fabric. She realises with a start that this is almost something a couple would do. But they have two months, so maybe that’s allowed.

The bags of stuff, so much stuff, find their way into his room, piled up against a wall. She’s laying on his bed, her feet hanging over the edge, her phone in front of her, liking things on Instagram, replying to comments on her pictures of the beach. She’s wearing one of Harry’s shirts, something he’d found left behind in a closet from a previous summer. It’s an old shirt, has a hole in the seam of the collar, but she thinks she loves it just a little, loves how it’s soft the cotton feels, loves how it smells a bit like him. 

He presses his face into her neck and whispers, “Is this okay?” so softly that it barely feels real. He always asks that, almost as if her answer is suddenly going to change. 

She exhales. _Two months._ “Yeah.”

He smiles against her skin. “Good.”

Two months suddenly almost doesn’t feel like enough.

-

She keeps up with everyone on Instagram.

Elle and Helena are off in Hawaii together, everyone else who was supposed to go on the trip bailing at the last minute, Allie included. She feels bad, just a little. Everyone probably thinks that she’s off in Europe right now. 

Gordie’s touring through Asia along with Jason and Lexie, and they’ll all post these pictures of them sightseeing, or performing in front crowds so large that it reminds Allie of the Olympics. She doubts she could ever do one of those tours, no matter money they offered her. Who knows, though. Maybe one day that’ll change.

Luke is still in Canton along with the rest of the guys who train at the Arctic Edge rink. Rumor has it that a professional team has their eye on him. Allie wonders what Helena thinks of that. Allie wonders if Helena knows.

Will is in Greenwich, and Gwen is with family in California.

Really, out of everyone in their little ice rink group, Allie and Harry are the only ones not posting about their summer. It stresses her out a little bit, so she forces a picture of a sunset onto her feed, the colors all purple and orange and pink. She tags the location. She doesn’t tag Harry.

Harry just deletes the app, as though that solves the problem Allie’s created in her head.

-

There’s saltwater in her eyes, her hair a mess haloed out around her, the straps of her bikini top just barely slipping down her shoulders.

She doesn’t care.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll prune up, Pressman?” he calls out to her from the beach. There’s a blue and white pinstripe towel laid down on the sand and an umbrella above. He’s afraid of burning, one of those people who apply sunscreen almost religiously. And it’s not fair how well he tans, the freckles on his shoulders reminding her of far away constellations.

“Nope! You should come join me,” she yells back. “The water’s really nice.”

He grins back at her, bright even while standing in the shade. The sun is high in the sky, the air warm, the light burning. Summer isn’t her favorite season, could never be when winter-- the way light catches on snowflakes as they fall, her breath clouding in front of her, the tinge of blue-- is right there, but… 

When Harry splashes into the water, brighter than the sun, happy and loud and everything she’d ever not realised she’d missed, Allie thinks that maybe _this_ is when summer starts to stand a chance.

-

Five days in, Harry drags her out to a fancy dinner at some restaurant in town. She wears that pair of pearl earrings. They somehow always end up in her purse, tucked away in a crushed velvet box. It doesn’t feel right to wear them all the time; she’s afraid she’ll lose one, that it’ll fall off as she skates or jogs, or that it’ll just disappear. She doesn’t want to lose one. They mean something.

And she’s attached to them, the tiny pearls, more attached than she’d care to admit. She knows they’re from Beijing, from a time just before everything went to shit, but she can’t find it in her to care. (She keeps her silver medal hanging up above her bed at home. Her dad wants to build her a trophy case, a proper one with a glass cover. She keeps telling him _no._ She thinks maybe he’ll do it anyways, that she’ll come home one day and it’ll be set up in the front room, something for her parents to brag to their friends about. Maybe that doesn’t matter.)

“You clean up nice, Pressman,” he tells her, his hand resting against her thigh in the car. They’re stuck at a stop sign waiting for a family to cross. 

Her hair is down and she’s wearing makeup, some lipstick and mascara that she’s always kept in her bag for emergencies. And she’s got a dress on, one of the ones Harry had picked out for her, something black with lace at the top. It’s nice, she’ll admit that, maybe not to his face, though.

“So do you, Bingham.”

They always attend the banquets after competitions together, and that’s almost how he looks right now-- put together, official, charming. And that feeling she’d get, deep down in her stomach, the one that felt like betrayal, like she’d risk it all for just one moment, that feeling would always be right on the surface. It’s not here right now, though. No, it’s far away, maybe somewhere in Canton, maybe left in Beijing. She’s not sure.

And it’s stupid, the flutter in her chest that she gets when he opens the car door for her, stupid how it doubles when he offers her his arm, stupid how much this feels like a date rather than just a dinner, rather than something they’ve done before. Because they’re here, at some restaurant that’s too fancy, surrounded by old people, surrounded by muted conversation, and she can’t stop smiling.

It just feels like he’s hers in a way that he isn’t usually. 

“You’re not gonna order for me, are you?” she asks, her elbows propped up on the table in a way that makes a lady nearby whisper. That doesn’t matter. Harry’s grinning.

“You want me to order for you?”

“Depends. What would you order?”

He’s still grinning. There’s still that flutter in her chest. “Crab cakes as an appetizer, two orders because you’ll refuse to share with me. And then the cajun chicken with a side of french fries which’ll make the waiter pause which will make you laugh which will probably make it all worth it. And later, for dessert, as many macaroons as we can get away with ordering, and that chocolate mousse too.”

She laughs, a little breathless, and leans back in her chair, rolling her eyes just because she can’t help it, can’t help how she feels. “Yeah,” she says, “you can order for me.”

He does, with a smirk that almost turns her on even though it probably shouldn’t. And he’s hooked his ankle around her under the table which is normal, she realises. It’s normal because that’s almost what they always do; they’re always touching, or at least usually touching, their knees or arms bruising, shoulders pressed together. He’ll keep his hand on top of hers like it’s nothing. She’ll forget that there was ever a time before that, a time where all she really had was stares across the rink and short conversations in an old kitchenette.

“Do you remember that?” she asks, about their time in Greenwich. “Did you ever think that this is what would happen, you and me, Kelly out of the picture and Will…?”

Harry stares at her, blinks once, twice-- “Sometimes, but… I just didn’t know you back then. Like, at all.”

“And you know me now?”

“Yeah.” There’s no hesitation before his words. It wouldn’t matter if there was. She believes him.

-

They’re sitting in his car, parked under a street lamp. The sky is clear above them. She almost wants to open the sunroof, wonders if he’d let her get away with that, knows that he would. 

“You had fun, right?” he asks, and it’s almost nervous, the way he says it. It’s almost nervous, and it’s definitely hopeful, and it makes her go soft, makes her go quiet, makes her smile.

“Yeah, I did. The food was really good. I almost want to go back just for the french fries.”

“Really? You don’t have to just say that, Allie. It’ll be fine if--”

“Really,” she interrupts, gently, though. “I think I usually have fun with you, Harry.”

And he pauses, stares at his hands, at the steering wheel, out the window. She stares at him. “I just don’t want to waste any of this,” he admits carefully. “God, Allie, I’ve been waiting so long even for a chance and--”

“I don’t want to waste any of this either.”

Her breathing is shaky when he reaches over, when his hand is on her cheek, when he kisses her, soft and sweet. She’s suddenly not sure what she’s supposed to do when she can’t have him like this anymore.

-

(He lets her open the sunroof as they drive back. On the residential streets, just minutes from the house, she peeks her head out, breathes in the air, smiles. And he’s laughing, laughing at her maybe. She’s laughing too. Later, after that, her dress will come off somewhere before the stairs, both those earrings, the pearls, for fucking delicate, will stay on, will leave tiny indentations behind her ears as she sleeps, her legs tangled in his, wearing one of his shirts. They’ll eat macaroons for breakfast the next morning and call Luke and Helena to congratulate them on finally getting engaged, two days after Helena and Elle got back from Hawaii. Allie will forget to worry about the future.)

-

She finds the stickers at a gift shop by the beach. She’s holding a bag of candy and a glass bottle of coke, Harry pulling cash out of his wallet to pay. She’s got one of those summer dresses on over her bathing suit, the weather bright and warm, the beach full. She spots the stickers and almost drops the coke. She spots the sticker and doesn’t think for a second before grabbing them.

Harry grins.

They’re five dollars, and the cashier, some teenager who can’t be much younger than them, squints down at the purchase. That doesn’t matter. Harry’s still grinning.

The ceiling in his room is high, high enough that it takes him standing on the bed and her sitting on his shoulders for them to reach. She presses the stickers into the ceiling one by one, Harry moving around slowly, pointing where they should go. It’s random, but she thinks about drawing out a medal, something gold, or maybe silver. She thinks about it for a second too long, hesitating, her palm resting flat on the ceiling, Harry’s hands resting just above her knees.

“You good up there, Pressman?”

She takes a deep breath, hooks her ankles together and shifts forward just slightly to place a star farther away, leaving a semi circle behind that she thinks could only just barely pass as a crescent moon. “Yeah,” she says eventually. “I’m good.”

And she slips off his shoulder and onto the bed, sticks the last sticker on his forehead as he hovers above her, smiles when he laughs, grins when he grins. Harry switches off the lights and the stickers glow an almost fluorescent green, leaving trails for her eyes to follow as she stares at the ceiling, him beside her now, always beside her.

“I didn’t think this was how it was going to go,” Harry admits quietly. In the dark, it almost sounds like it was meant to just be a thought.

“How did you think it was going to go?” she asks, but that feels wrong, the question. It feels like something she already knows. It feels like she should just agree and let it be. It feels like they’ll never be able to move on from Beijing. God, she’s not sure she ever will be able to move on.

He pauses. For a second, Allie thinks that he’s not going to respond, that they’ll leave it at that, leave it on a question to which she already knows the answer. For a second she thinks that he’ll let silence change the subject, that he’ll fall asleep or she’ll fall asleep and they’ll pretend to forget about this.

“I thought that we’d be in Canton with gold medals, that we’d be half drunk and you’d be lining the walls of my apartment with stars you bought off Amazon. I just… I thought things would be different,” he finally says. And, yeah, that’s what she thought he’d say.

“I’m happy that we’re here, Harry,” she breathes out. He shifts beside her until his face is resting in the crook of her neck.

“Me too.”

-

They bike along the shoreline, watch as the waves crash into the cliffs, the grass around them a soft sort of green. It’s early in the morning, and the sun is rising out of the ocean, the water shimmering in the light. She’s never felt farther from Canton.

When Harry drops his bike in the grass, taking off on foot through the sand, she follows. She thinks she’d always follow him.

That’s not an issue right now. She doesn’t try to imagine a day that it might become one. She’s happy.

-

One month in, tan lines on her shoulders from a blue bikini top, freckles dotting her face, sun bleached strips in her hair, she starts to realise this all has to end at some point. There’s an expiration date to summer. There’s an expiration date to whatever they are right now.

She tries to push those thoughts aside.

Sitting in his kitchen, at the island on wood stools, light streaming in through a large front window, Harry making pancakes because they couldn’t find the waffle iron, she wonders what she’d give up for this to be her entire future.

“Can you get the strawberries out the fridge?”

Allie blinks up at him. His hair is everywhere, and he’s wearing an old cotton t-shirt, plain white, and boxers and, God, he doesn’t deserve to look this good. “Sure.”

They eat pancakes topped with strawberries and whipped cream, her perched on his lap, him reading her bits of the news off his phone. She’s nineteen. He’s twenty. She thinks she’d give up a lot for this to be her forever.

And later, when it’s night, the moon high in the sky, glow in the dark stars above them, his arm pressed into her side, warm and comforting and familiar, she thinks that she should be writing all of this down, trying harder to remember the million little moments where things feel so inexplicably _right._ Harry takes pictures, pictures of everything. She’ll scroll through them on his phone, will airdrop them to herself sometimes, the best ones, the brightest ones, the ones of things she wants to remember.

_(Them on the boardwalk, an ice cream cone in her hand, the sun spilling into the sky, a mess of pink and purple and orange. Before.)_

She’s not sure how they’re supposed to go back to normal after this. She’s not sure what normal is anymore.

-

Cassandra texts her about chlorophyll chewing gum, about walking through old European cities, about summer. Allie talks about the beach, about the ocean and the waves and the tiny shops that line the streets of the downtown. She doesn’t mention Harry. She thinks that this is how it’s always been, her hiding him from Cassandra. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t make an effort to change that.

Because it’s stupid now, when Cassandra knows, when Cassandra’s aware of everything that’s going on, the only person really does know.

Allie can’t figure out why she’s trying so hard to keep this summer a secret. 

-

It’s storming outside, thunder and lightning and wind blowing the rain up off the street. They had to close all the windows, draw up the curtains and turn on the lights, but she doesn’t really care. It almost makes the place feel cozy.

And they’re in the kitchen, her perched on the counter, the fridge wide open, Harry standing in front of it, searching for something other than Wwhite Cclaw and half eaten takeout. There’s a slice of chocolate cake pushed all the way to the back, hidden in the produce drawer in one of those white boxes. She refuses to tell him about it.

“Nothing’s changed since the last time you looked for food,” she tells him, her hands on his shoulders. He turns around to stare at her, to grab her hands and tug her off the counter. The fridge is still open. The air is cold. “What are you doing?” she asks with a laugh. He shrugs.

“You wanna dance?”

“There’s no music,” she says, and he’s smiling down at her, so fondly that it makes her heart hurt.

“We have music in our heads,” he says, and faintly, faintly she can remember saying those exact words to him before. 

“That doesn’t count.”

Harry sighs dramatically, pulls out his phone and a second later that waltz is playing. It feels almost too sad for this moment, feels a bit like a relic from a time where things were different, not necessarily easier but… 

As the waltz crescendos in a mess of color, his eyes stay firmly on hers, his hold on her waist tight, and she wonders if this even counts as dancing, them swaying back and forth. She thinks it should.

When Harry leans in, when he whispers, “Is this okay?” like all those times before, she thinks it’s deja vu that takes her breath away. It’s gone, caught in her throat, so she nods instead.

He pulls away slowly after that, their foreheads still resting together, his eyes flitting up and down her face almost as if he can’t really believe that she’s there. He does that a lot, but she thinks she does too. 

“I love you,” he says slowly, softly.

And when she said _two months_ she wasn’t sure what that meant, not really. But she knows why she said it. “I love you too.”

She shakes that feeling of finality away as he kisses her again, but it doesn’t change their situation.

They have two weeks left. 

-

They’ve been living together.

She doesn’t know why that takes her so long to fully realise. It’s five days until _two months_ have passed. Five days. She finds herself counting them down, has the number of hours, one hundred and twenty, imprinted in her mind. She’s been keeping track, as though that helps with this feeling of impending doom. 

It doesn’t.

She’s been living with Harry Bingham for nearly two months, them sharing an upstairs bathroom, brushing their teeth side by side, sharing shampoo and conditioner, her borrowing his razor, the one with the grippy blue handle, that time when she couldn’t find hers. God, he’d let her keep it, pushed it to her side of the vanity. She hasn’t used it since but--

She’s been living with Harry Bingham for nearly two months, them eating all of their meals together, pressed close at the kitchen island, knees brushing at the dining room table, her legs on his lap on the couch. They fall asleep beside one another, her head on his chest, his heart beat right in her ear, loud, a reminder.

It’s them making out in the backseat of his car, on yellow striped beach chairs, in the backs of movie theaters, up against the wood railings on the pier. In the water, on the sand, on his couch, later, while a movie plays in the background.

It’s them listening to music, new pop songs and old country songs, dancing along to whatever plays on their Spotify Discover Weekly. It’s them late at night talking, talking like they did before, before on the floors of hotel rooms, cheap carpet and cheaper vodka. They have expensive wine now, old scotch from a locked liquor cabinet.

They’ve been living together for two months, and Elle calls her when they only have five days left.

“So you didn’t end up going to Europe, huh?” she says, her voice light, an almost laugh right on the surface. “I saw your Instagram posts. How are the Hamptons this time of year?”

Allie presses the phone between her ear and her shoulder, moves to grab her mug of tea from the counter. Harry’s out on a run. Normally she’d go with him, but Elle had texted yesterday, asked if they could talk. She hadn’t mentioned this to Harry.

“It’s nice. Pretty busy, but… nice.” (Them on the beach at midnight, the moon up high. The taste of saltwater. Mosquito bites. Pasta at that one restaurant downtown. It’s all nice.) “How about Hawaii? How was that? Just you and Helena, right?”

Allie can hear Elle’s quick exhale, something that almost sounds shaky. “Yeah it was-- it was good. Lots of fun. But.. umm…” Elle trails off, swallowing again, and the phone is shifted just barely, from one ear to another. “So you’re with your family?” Elle finally asks. 

And Allie pauses. Maybe this is the time to just admit it, the time to tell someone, to tell Elle, everything, or at least almost everything, at least a partial truth. She could do it, and so what if that makes everything real. So what if that creates consequences and question and--

“Yeah,” Allie eventually says. “Yeah. I’ve been with my family.”

“That must be nice, spending time with them.”

Allie swallows. “It has been. It’s been really nice.”

“And you’re coming back soon, back to Canton?”

“Yeah, in about a week.” No, five days. One hundred and twenty hours. That’s how much is left. She doesn’t give Elle an exact answer. She tries to tell herself that it doesn’t matter.

It does matter, though. It’s almost over, whatever all of this has been. Tan lines and freckles and sun bleached strips of hair won’t matter soon. It’ll all just be in the past, filtered and faded in that way memories always seem to become.

Canton doesn’t feel so far away anymore. She worries that she doesn’t want to go back.

-

No one is forcing her to think too hard, too much, too desperately about the past and the present and the future. No one is forcing her to think about what could’ve been, what should’ve been, what might’ve been if she’d just been a little braver or stronger or _better_ or--

No one is forcing her to think about anything.

She dreams that night of Olympic rings, of that podium, of the sound of the crowd before their free skate. She dreams of the weight of the medal against her chest, dreams in black and white of things that have already passed. Gold looks like silver and silver looks like bronze. She dreams of that.

She dreams of a different future, one that’s already fleshed out. She dreams and she dreams and she dreams.

It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t _want_ to go back. They’re going back. They’re doing it again. They’re going to win this time. 

They’re not going to fuck it up again. She’s going to be better.

-

There’s a yellow hammock hung up in a shaded corner of the yard, between two trees that Harry tells her the Homeowners Association wanted them to cut down. She spends a whole day out there with a Donna Tartt book that she never actually opens. With her headphones in, she listens to classical music from old programs. Pffiefer had texted early in the morning, something about picking a piece for their new free dance. And Harry had thumbs-upped the message-- which is something she knows he only does to be passive aggressive-- before throwing his phone across the couch. That was when she’d gone outside.

Canton’s getting closer. They can’t avoid it. Not anymore.

And at some point Harry joins her in the hammock, sets a bowl of fruit down on the ground, presses his face against her neck, whispers something that she can’t quite make out. And she’s pulling her earbuds out, something by Bach still playing, loud enough she thinks she can maybe hear it. Only, he’s pulled her on top of him, and then the hammock is shifting, shifting enough that they fall out, a heap of tangled limbs on the grass. She’s laughing, laughing while Bach plays-- Suite No. 3-- a sharp ache in her hip that doesn’t matter when he’s beaming down at her like that.

God, a lot of things don’t matter when he looks at her like that.

He makes them pasta for dinner, and she sits on the counter eating enough strawberries to dye her lips a darker pink, swinging her legs back and forth, hooking them around his hips, laughing when he laughs, clear and bright and happy.

This is what summer is. This is what she’s always wanted summer to be.

But Bach is still playing on her phone, and Pffiefer’s message is still at top of notifications.

Later, the moon shining in through a side window, his arm resting against her, his fingers splayed against the plane of her stomach, pressed under her top, some old shirt of his, cotton and soft. He’s drawing patterns against her skin, his fingertips light. They pause as she takes a deep breath in, letting it out slowly.

“Everything okay?”

She pauses, takes another breath. The side window is open, the curtains moving with the wind. They’re yellow, the same shade as the hammock. It’s only been hours, but she wants to go back to that. “I think we should talk, Harry.”

“Talk about what?” he asks, but she thinks he already knows. He has to.

“About the future.”

Harry lets out a soft exhale. “What about it, Allie?” He sounds tired, nervous, quiet, stubborn.

And she can make out his profile in the dark, stares at the slope of his nose, the curve of his jaw. She could stare at him forever, worries that she would if given the chance. “Everything goes back to the way it was soon.”

There’s quiet. She thinks she can hear the ocean, wonders if that’s just in her head. With the window open, she can smell the ocean air. It’s not like this in Caton. That shouldn’t matter.

Eventually, Harry asks, quietly, “Do you want things to go back to how they were?”

“That doesn’t--” She’s not sure she has an answer. She’s not sure what she wants. No, no, that’s wrong; she knows what she wants. She knows that the flecks in his eyes still look like gold medals sometimes, that they already made a choice, that there’s no going back. “That doesn’t matter, Harry. We said two months. It’s been two months. We have to go back.”

He shifts away from her, just barely, his fingertips still against her skin. She can’t tell what the pattern is. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “So this is it?”

She opens her mouth, is about to say something, only… she doesn’t have anything to say. They sit in the quiet, the waves crashing on the beach, glow in the dark stars pressed high up above. She thinks that maybe this is another ending.

Summer ends. It has to. She’s known this from the start.

-

They drive back to West Ham with twenty four hours left. They’d spent hours the day before packing up the Hamptons house, all of the stuff they bought, those brand new wardrobes, folded up and packed into reusable cloth bags marked with _South Hampton._ They hadn’t talked once through it all, elbows knocking as they reached for button up shirts or flowy sundresses. 

And that night they’d laid in bed, her in his t-shirt, that old one, cotton, soft. It still smelled like him. She’d packed it into one of her bags in the morning, put it on top. He’d watched, had watched her with some sad sort of small smile. 

They’d laid in bed, his nose buried in the side of her neck, his breath warm, his arms wrapped around her waist. And she wants to remember that part, wants to remember it when they’re back to whatever they were before. She wants to remember it when her dreams go back to revolving around a gold medal and a gold medal only. 

She wants to remember it when she can’t have _him_ anymore, at least not like how she has him now.

-

She’s standing in the front hall of his family’s West Ham home, surrounded by family pictures-- Harry and Kelly on top of a podium, after the Olympics, silver medals heavy around their necks, Harry’s dad all alone-- and pale grey walls. Her stuff is beside her, that overly large suitcase, the bags of things they’d bought. She’s wearing sweats, all those flowy dresses packed away. She’s not sure what she’s going to do with them now. She can’t imagine wearing them in Canton.

“I’m driving back home next week,” he tells her. It sounds almost like a question, like _the_ question, like he’s asking for this to last a little long. It’s not, though. Not really. 

“I’m going to fly back,” she says, trying so desperately hard to sound firm. It just comes out desperate, a little sad, a little tired. She thinks she might be shaking. “Elle wants to look at some houses. I think we’re finally gonna move out of that apartment complex.”

“Oh,” he breathes out. “When does your flight leave?”

She swallows something down, something like guilt, something like regret. “Tonight. It leaves tonight.”

Harry blinks over at her, laughs, sharp and humorless and wry. “When did you book this flight?”

“Harry--” she starts, soft and warning. He laughs again, still sharp.

“Allie,” he says back, mockingly. She glares over at him.

“I booked the flight two months ago.”

And she hasn’t seen him like this since that party Luke had, hasn’t seen him look this harsh, this cruel, this upset. “Of course you did.”

“Of course I did?”

“Yeah. _Of course you did._ I should’ve known that you-- that you were just what? Stringing me along? God, Allie, I love you, you know that. I fucking love you, which is obviously a mistake.”

“That’s not fair, Harry,” she spits back. “We agreed. We said two months. It’s been two months. And maybe I don’t want it to end, and maybe I wish--” She feels like she’s falling apart, grasping the handle of the suitcase so tightly that her knuckles are white. And Harry, Harry feels like he’s so fucking far away, the farthest he’s been in years. “It’s just four years, right? And four years-- four years is nothing, it’s nothing compared to those dreams we’ve had since we were little. Right?”

She thinks she’s crying, can feel the tears burning, her vision spotted. He steps closer, just barely. She can’t breathe. And closer again, close enough to reach, close enough that his hand is over hers, rubbing circles into her skin. She’s crying.

“Allie…” he starts. She tries to take a deep breath. It’s shaky.

“Just tell me it’ll be worth it.”

He’s still rubbing circles into her skin when he reaches up to wipe a tear from her cheek. She hates how she leans into him. “It’ll be worth it.”

Allie’s not sure she believes him.

-

He distances himself from her, almost imperceptibly. She tells herself that it’s for the best. She hates how they fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed and wake up pressed together. She hates how she can hear her hurt, how she’s ignoring it. She seems to be ignoring a lot.

They find an extra suitcase upstairs for her to put her new stuff in. It’s black and looks expensive, but Harry is so casual in giving it to her that she tries not to care either. She keeps the _South Hampton_ bags, folds them up and tucks them next to the dresses. And she keeps that t-shirt too, realises she was never planning on giving it back.

At the airport, he pulls up to the curb and helps her get the suitcases out of the trunk. His car is still running. She thinks that gives them both an ultimatum.

“I’ll see you Canton, Harry,” she says. He swallows hard, his mouth opening just barely. She thinks that maybe he’s going to say something, ask something. She thinks that maybe he’s going to ask her to stay. She thinks that even now she would, she’d stay, she’d live in these two months for forever, she’d forget all about gold medals and dreams if he just _asked._

He doesn’t. 

“See you Canton, Pressman.”

She takes a deep breath and doesn’t look back.

Summer is over.

-

**before.**

-

A list of things Allie wishes she and Harry had done during those two months.

Talk about the future.

-

**vi.**

-

In the time between summer and the start of training, Allie gets bangs. Elle cuts them for her, the night they sign the lease for their new place. She regrets them, but only a little. They make her feel more grown up somehow. 

They make her feel different.

A lot of things feel different now. Summer was a before and after, a bookend. She thought that that was how the Olympics would act, a clear end to something. When she thinks about it, though, the Olympics felt more like an interlude than anything else. But summer…

The end of those two months feel like the end to a lot of things.

She keeps those pearl earrings on, almost never takes them off now. The box they came in is still taking up room in her purse. She keeps meaning to move it to her vanity, or maybe to that top drawer in her desk. Really, she does. It’s just, she keeps forgetting, and maybe it’s a little nice, being able to reach into her purse and feel the crushed velvet. Maybe it’s comforting. That shouldn’t be something that’s wrong.

In the time between summer and the start of training, Harry doesn’t text her once, not after she leaves, not to ask if she arrived safely, not to tell her that he’s left for Canton, and not to tell her that he’s arrived. He’s back at his apartment, and she wonders why exactly he’s still there; he can afford some large house in the suburbs, or maybe one of those new condos near the rink. She wants to tell him that, but he’s not texting her, so why exactly should she text him?

It’s been just over a week of them not talking, but it feels wrong. She’s just not used to it, the lack of contact with him.

She’d never tell anyone this, but she’d almost been afraid to move out of that apartment, afraid to not be just over a hundred feet away from him at almost all times, to not be able to knock on his door when she was scared or stressed or bored or nervous or even excited. Those thoughts are bitter now, but it still feels a bit cruel when she thinks that it’s all for the best. 

They just need boundaries, that’s all.

That first day back to training, she walks to the rink, because it’s only five minutes, and it’s nice out. Elle has a car now, says that Allie can use it whenever she wants to, that they can add her to the insurance. She thinks that means there’s not much of a reason to be asking Harry for rides anymore.

That first day back, she sees Harry on the ice, and it feels like a lot longer than just a week. It feels like there’s something caught between them, something like time, something that she’s trying to lose, let go of. She can’t tell if he’s trying to let go of it too.

-

Their skating is fine. Pffiefer looks disappointed when she almost falls once, twice, three times, almost face plants on the ice, almost slips out of a lift that they’ve been doing for years, but that doesn’t matter, or at least shouldn’t matter.

Harry asks her if she’s okay almost as if it’s an afterthought, and that shouldn’t matter as much to her as it does either. When their ice time is up, she can count the words he’s spoken to her on one hand. On her other hand, she can count the words she’s spoken to him. Just as they’re getting off the ice, leaning against the boards to slip skate guards on, Lexie yells something across the rink about how much she likes Allie’s new bangs. Allie turns her way to shout back a _thanks,_ and by the time her attention shifts back, Harry’s gone.

She buys herself a vanilla ice cream cone after practice and takes two bites before throwing it away. And she doesn’t cry, no, doesn’t cry when she gets home because what is there to cry about?

 _Nothing._ She repeats that to herself over and over, pushing her hair out of her eyes. God, why did she ever think that bangs were a good idea? Why does she always think stupid things are good ideas? _Nothing._

(She can say it as many times as she wants. That still won’t make it true.)

-

God, she just misses him.

It’s his birthday. She buys him a chocolate cake from that bakery he likes and forces everyone to sing Happy Birthday. He pretends to hate it, but you'd have to be blind to miss that smile that appears right before he blows out the candles.

“You doing anything tonight?” she asks, and it’s not meant to sound like she’s trying to invite him to do something with her. He’s twenty-one now. Somehow, that feels more adult than eighteen.

“Yeah,” he says tersely, “I’m going out with some friends.”

“Oh,” she breathes out. And she remembers that first birthday he spent in Canton, the year he’d turned eighteen, them passing back and forth that bottle of vodka, them dancing around his living room, that promise of _after the Olympics._ It’s after the Olympics now. She realises that a lot of their list was checked off over the summer. 

The night of Harry’s twenty-first birthday, Helena and Lexie and even Gwen come over to her and Elle’s place. They have a game night, and climb up onto the roof to watch the sunset, falling asleep on the couch while a movie plays. The next morning, while she can only assume Harry sits hungover in his apartment, Lexie makes pancakes and everyone tosses blueberries at Gwen whenever she makes a bad joke. Helena stays an extra night and forces Allie and Elle to eat the dinner she makes even though it’s all whole wheat and gluten free. Allie never realised how close Helena and Elle were. She wonders if they ever forget that they’re competitors like the way she would with Harry back in Greenwich.

And it’s while the three of them watch Jeopardy that Allie realises Harry hasn’t even been by the house. She wonders if he even knows the address. She wonders if he knows that he’s somewhere in the back of her mind as she picks out a new desk at ikea, mocking her as she tries to figure out what color the wood should be. And she wanted this, this separation. She knows that. She understands that.

She just didn’t realise it’d be like this.

They talk on the ice and only on the ice. They talk about training, about their new free dance, about that twizzle sequence. She jokes that she’s never felt dizzier, and he only gives her a half smile. Now, now there’s no lying on the floor of his apartment, no more passing bottles of water back and forth pretending it’s vodka, and no more passing vodka back and forth either. Now, there’s no more falling asleep and waking up beside him, their legs tangled, her head on his chest, so close that his heart beat is the only thing she can really hear.

Now, now they’re skating better than ever, and that feels a bit like some sick proof that this is how it was always meant to be. 

-

While they sat on the roof of the apartment building, Harry would remind her of those dreams she had when she was eight. He’d say _you wanted to be the best there ever was_ with this smile that’d make her pause and stare. He’d mention snow, mention how it was always snowing when he was with her, and she’d laugh because _that can’t be all true._ Even then, when she saw Harry, she thought of summer.

Harry doesn’t remind her of those dreams anymore. He doesn’t bring them up. Instead, they sit, unspoken in the space between them, heavy and full of half broken promises.

Because she was eight and she had goals and dreams and plans. Because she keeps fucking those things up, making the same misktakes, choosing boys and feelings over something that’s tangible and real. Over gold medals. Over glory.

She just wants proof that she’s doing all of this for something, that it’s all worth it. Maybe that’s all she’s ever wanted.

-

Not even a month in, she hears some girls whispering in the locker room about him.

“I heard Harry’s got a girlfriend,” one of them says, and they all look over at Allie, waiting for her reaction. She tries to ignore it, keeps untying her skates. They continue.

“It’s that girl who teaches skating classes to kids,” another one of them says. “She’s really nice.” 

And there’s an ache in her chest, a hole where something should be, where someone was, where he was. She doesn’t know what she was thinking back then. She must’ve been high on sunlight and salt water and _him._

Harry introduces her to Kat with a shrug of his shoulders, and Allie reaches out to shake the girl’s hand. 

“So you’re the skating partner?” Kat asks like it’s not common knowledge, like Allie’s not something, someone, who’s there, who’s been there. 

Allie blinks. “Yeah, I’m the skating partner.”

Later, from across the rink, she watches him smile at Kat, soft and small, like he knows that she’s something he wants, like she’s something he won. He whispers something in her ear, and she throws her head back laughing, beaming, bright.

She and Harry-- they were never together. They had two months of… something, and those two months ended. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants. He’s allowed to fall in love with whoever he wants. 

She just-- Allie thought she had more time.

-

She enrolls at the University of Michigan part time, taking as many classes online as she can fit into her schedule. She thinks about getting a job too, maybe working at that bakery downtown, or teaching classes at the rink. Harry teaches classes sometimes, though, and it feels wrong to follow him like that. Him and his girlfriend.

She thinks that maybe she wants to become a journalist after all of this. Once upon a time she’d wanted a rink of her own, and sometimes she thinks she still does but--

Maybe one day she’ll never want to skate again, and maybe one day she’ll want to distance herself from her childhood dreams. With sports journalism, it won’t feel like these years were just a waste, but it also won’t feel like something she latched onto when she was eight. It’ll feel like something new.

Increasingly, Allie finds herself searching for things that make her feel new.

-

They place first in their first competition back, winning by nearly ten points. Gwen falls out of a lift, a bruise purple and blooming over her right knee. Allie helps her ice it backstage, and Will storms out of the convention center before they even hand out the medals. Someone makes up an excuse, tells an official that he _wasn’t feeling well,_ but Allie doubts anyone really believes it.

None of that really matters.

Harry’s putting his medal in his bag when she walks over to him, Gwen sitting in one of those stiff leather chairs, a coach asking if she’s okay. She’s still got that American flag wrapped around her shoulders. Allie’s medal is tucked under her hoodie, cold against her skin. She refuses to move it.

“Hey,” she says to him, as casually as she can. “We did really good, yeah?”

He nods, barely looking up at her. “Yeah.”

“Do you… I don’t know, I just need fries and a vanilla shake, and I don’t go alone so…?” she asks, her breath halting and faint, her heart out on her sleeve, even if she doesn’t want it to be there. Somehow, that’s where it always seems to end up now.

He stares up at her, blinks before shouldering his bag. “Yeah, sure.”

They walk five minutes to some mom and pop diner that’s about to close, talking the whole time about what went right with their skating that night. Harry keeps complimenting that lift they did, keeps complimenting the curve in her back, and if this wasn’t their job, if they hadn’t been doing this for years, she doubts she’d know what to think.

Walking back to the hotel room, his shoulder brushes against hers just as she grabs the last fry. “I don’t want to jinx it but--”

“Don’t say anything then,” she cuts in quickly, elbowing him in the side. He pulls the milkshake away from her, ignoring her protests as he takes a long sip, throwing their trash in the bin in the hotel lobby.

She stares down at the tiled ground, watches as it turns to carpet as they near their rooms.

“We’re okay, right?” she finally asks, feeling a little braver than she’s felt for a little while now, maybe ever since that day on his doorstep. Faintly, it registers that she doesn’t feel brave all that often.

He blinks down at her, staring for a very long moment, like he’s trying to figure something out. “Yeah, Allie, of course we’re okay.”

She takes another step closer to him, so close that she can make out the specks in his eyes, that she can pick them apart, the ones that look like medals versus the ones that look like stars. “Good. I just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”

This time, it’s her hand on his face, her thumb sweeping across his jaw, her fingers light against his cheek. His eyes close and they’re stuck in the moment, frozen

“We can’t do this, Allie,” he finally says, his eyes flashing open suddenly, and all she can see in the flecks are stars as the words, so incredibly firm, force her backwards.

“No, you’re-- you’re right,” she says, nodding once, twice, three times. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

That’s a lie; she knew exactly what she was thinking. And he did too.

-

There’s a lot of things she wants to ask Harry. She wants to ask if the carpet in his bedroom is still gray and scratchy. She wants to ask if he still wears that one hoodie to sleep when it’s cold outside. She wants to ask if he went up to the roof when it snowed for the first time yesterday or if that’s just a thing that she always forced him to do with her.

Mostly, though, she wants to ask if he really meant it when he said _I love you,_ and, maybe even more than that, she wants to ask if he misses her just as much as she misses him.

(She doubts she’ll ever get the chance to ask him any of those things. She tells herself that that’s okay.)

-

She meets Henry at a coffee shop. He accidentally knocks over her drink at the counter and offers to buy her a new one along with whatever pastry she wants to make up for it. It’s the most meet-cute moment she’s ever had, and she loves it a little bit more than she probably should.

They sit across from one another at a table and talk and by the end of it, by the time she looks down at her phone and realises she’s late to practice, she’s already got his number and a promise that they’ll see each other again soon.

Nothing about Henry has a deadline to it. There’s nothing waiting for them at the end of two months. And maybe when she imagines the future she doesn’t see him, and maybe that doesn’t matter. She’s only really ever seen one boy in her future, and he’s still right there, even if it’s not the same.

But she likes him. She likes how he’s safe, how he’s going to be an engineer one day, work at his dad’s firm. She likes how he has things planned out, reasonable things, things that you only dream of when you get a little older. Sometimes, Allie feels like she’s living out the dreams of her eight year old self. Sometimes, she thinks she should just move on.

When she’s with Henry, she almost doesn’t feel like it’s too late to just _start over._

In a lot of ways, that makes him everything she’s ever wanted. For their first date, he takes her out to some hipster restaurant in an over gentrified neighborhood that uses jars as cups. He kisses from across the table at the end of the night and then again as they walk to his car. His eyes don’t leave the road as he drives her home, but that’s good, that’s safe. And maybe he doesn’t look at her like he can’t believe she’s even there, but she doesn’t look at him that way either. Elle thinks he’s nice in a sort of passable way, thinks the jokes he tells are cute, thinks that it’s good Allie’s happy.

Only, the thing is, Henry’s everything she’s ever wanted, and she’s not happy.

She cries the first time they have sex, cries in the bathroom afterwards, throwing on that old cotton t-shirt entirely by accident, crying harder when she realises what she’s done. He doesn’t feel familiar. He doesn’t feel right.

But Harry-- 

It shouldn’t matter what Harry was or is or could be anymore. Harry’s moved on, he’s moved past whatever summer was, and she should be past it too.

She’s not happy, but she thinks, desperately, that maybe she could be.

-

There’s nothing about Kat that’s not to like. 

She’s nice. She teaches little kids how to skate and volunteers at the concession stand during hockey games and tries her hardest to make it to any local shows Harry and Allie compete at, always rushes back stage to yell a congratulations no matter how they place, always slips Harry’s medal around her neck, always kisses his cheek before his lips.

Allie didn’t tell Henry about skating for the first month. Even now, after he’s found out, she continues to not bring it up. He doesn’t seem to care. She tries to convince herself that that’s nice.

Kat seems to fit into Harry’s life easily, a bit like she’s always been there. She goes to those parties the hockey people throw, sits on Luke’s kitchen counter with a White Claw like it’s nothing. She thinks that Harry must like that. 

-

They win at Nationals, get to stand at the very top of the podium, Will and Gwen on the step below, all tight smiles as they’re forced to wave at the crowd. It makes Allie happy, in some sick way. This is a competition that _matters_ and they won, she and Harry won, and they won by a lot.

And that post-Nationals party that’s taking up practically an entire floor, the one with the music, the four distinctly different songs that you can hear all at the same time if stand in just the right place, the one with the beer pong in one corner and karaoke in another, someone doing body shots while a different group passes around a bottle of expensive looking scotch, yeah, that party. With her gold medal tucked into her bag, Allie decides it looks pretty nice.

She tries talking to this one figure skater from a rink up in New York, tries again with speed skater from the Bay Area but… she’s just bored, honestly, bored of the same fucking questions and congratulations being said over and over. 

And there’s Henry, too, which almost feels more like an afterthought than anything else, especially with Helena and Elle forcing her to do another set of shots. She wants to ask when the two of them became attached at the hip.

Harry’s right by her side before she gets the chance too.

“Celebrating our win, Pressman?” he asks, nuding her with his elbow. Elle and Helena slip away just as he appears, disappearing into the too loud crowd of American skaters.

“Yep,” she says, popping the P and watching him smile down at her. “I think I might head out, though. It’s getting a little late.”

“I can walk you back to your room,” he offers, his head tilted toward her. She should probably stop and think, but she doesn’t. No, instead she grabs his hand and pulls him toward the exit.

And she’s not sure what she’s thinking when she breaks out into a run, straight down the hall and towards the elevator. She’s not sure what she’s thinking, but when he starts to laugh, when runs right next to her, when he looks over, so fucking bright and happy--

Yeah, maybe that’s what she was thinking.

They’re out of breath by the time they get into the elevator, and she can’t stop giggling, her mouth tasting only a little like those shots of tequila she had, only just barely really. She’s giggling, and Harry’s holding her hand still, tight, squeezing it once, then twice. 

“What was that?” he asks, laughing, and neither of them have pushed the button for her floor yet.

She shrugs. “I don’t really know. I guess I just wanted to run?”

“So you ran?”

“So I ran,” she repeats, pushing her chin up high like she’s proud or something, and he’s laughing again. Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much, but she can’t seem to stop, has to force her gaze away from him to hit the button for the fifth floor. The elevator jolts to a start, and she falls into him, his hands automatically on her waist, steadying her. She tilts her head back.

“Why do we always end up like this?” she asks, and he lets out this half laugh but doesn’t step away from her. She’s not sure if she wants him anywhere but where he is right now.

“Probably something to do with fate,” he says, almost seriously. But… she likes the sound of that, _fate._

“Yeah, probably.”

She stares up at him until the flecks in his eyes turn from medals to stars and then steps back just as the elevator doors open. “Thanks for running with me, Harry.”

He’s looking at her like he can’t believe she’s real. She can hear her heart loud in her chest. “Anytime, Pressman.”

-

Kat corners Allie in the changing room, following her in there as she slips off the ice. Harry’s still out there laughing at a joke Allie made, and she thinks that maybe they’re going to grab lunch after this to talk through a schedule for some extra practices before Worlds. She wonders if Kat knows that. She wonders if that’s why she’s following.

“Hey,” Kat says, clasping and unclasping her hands out in front of her. Her nails are covered in chipped white polish. Allie can’t remember that last time she herself got a manicure. “Can I ask you a question?”

Allie blinks. This feels… it feels serious, almost. It feels like the preface to a discussion about-- well about Harry, probably. Allie’s not sure she wants to talk about Harry. Not right now. Not with his girlfriend. That doesn’t matter, though. “Yeah, sure.”

“Did you and Harry ever… you know, date?”

Oh. This question.

She lets out an exhale, something soft, something that’s almost a laugh, and pushes her skates farther into her bag. Beside her, her phone chimes. It’s Harry, probably, telling her that he’s waiting out front, telling her that they’re going to that bakery on Main Street because he wants a chocolate croissant even though he knows that she’d rather go to that one cafe. It’s Harry, probably, and she flips the phone over before Kat can see the notification. 

“No, no we never dated. Just friends. And skating partners.”

“Really?” Kat says, and it’s all disbelief, the look on her face. It’s entirely disbelief. Allie hates it.

“Yeah.”

“But you two… you guys just have a lot of chemistry for two people who aren’t together or haven’t ever been together, that’s all.” And Kat’s staring off at some point far away, not studying Allie’s face for a clue that she’s lying. There’s a poster, off in the corner, something motivational, the word dedication over and over. It’s peeling off the wall. Maybe one day they’ll finally take it down.

“We’re just friends,” she repeats, softer this time.

Kat sighs, turning to Allie, something that almost looks like a smile playing at the corners of her lips. It looks bitter too, a bit sharp, a bit harsh. “He’s always talking about you, about something you said or did or want to do. He talks about you a lot. That’s why I was wondering. He just seems a little obsessed sometimes.”

“We spend a lot of time together.

Kat snorts, almost a laugh but not quite. She doesn’t look like she believes a word Allie’s saying. “That’s what Harry said too.”

“It’s true,” Allie says, sounding desperate now, more desperate than she really should. She wants to repeat those words, again and again until even she believes them. How long would that really take?

Kat shakes her head, her mouth a straight line. “Thanks for answering my question, Allie.”

And as she leaves, Kat pushes down the corner of the poster until it’s stuck on the wall again. It stays like that for a second, stays stuck long enough that Allie almost thinks it’s permanent. Only then it flies back up, the last bit of _dedication,_ the o and the n, hidden from view once again.

Yeah, they should just take that thing down.

-

She texts Harry a made up excuse about too much class work and doesn’t wait for his response, hiding out in the kitchenette until Elle comes to pick her up. She thinks that maybe they’re being stupid, acting like this, dancing around each other like that, pretneding like there’s no such thing as consequences.

Maybe they’re stupid to think that things could just go back to normal.

-

They come in second at Worlds, losing by a two tenths of a point to some Canadian pair. Henry calls afterwards to tell her that they should’ve won, and Allie forces out this press conference laugh as he says it before turning off her phone. She doubts he even really watched.

She puts those earrings on, the pearl ones, the ones Harry got her that she can’t seem to get rid of. They’re in Perols, France, and it’s still a little light out, the sun almost about to set. Down at the front desk, in broken French, she asks for recommendations of things to do.

She doesn’t bother trying to talk to Harry. Two tenths feels a lot like one tenth, and Worlds suddenly feels a lot like the Olympics.

-

They’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that Luke and Helena finally picked a date for the wedding, but it feels more like a frat party than anything else, two kegs in the backyard, red solo cups littered everywhere. She can’t count the number of parties she’s been to at Luke’s that have looked exactly like this.

It’s funny because Luke and Helena had handed out wedding invitations yesterday at the rink, cardstock covered with a picture of professionally taken and a date, time, and place. They’re having it down at Lake St. Claire, and Allie wonders if they’ll say their vows as the sun sets. She thinks that that’s how she would do it.

Helena welcomes her and Elle inside, pushing them out of the cold and taking their coats from them as though this is the type of party where you do that. It’d snowed the night before, everything blanketed a dull grey now. It looks like Luke had salted the front path, but he did a pretty shitty job with it, patches of ice and slush all over the place, enough that Allie spends thirty seconds trying to decide whether or not to keep her shoes on. In that time, Helena and Elle disappear, one of them saying something about grabbing drinks.

For a second, she almost wishes she’d taken Henry with her to this thing. It’s just that it’s two different worlds, skating and whatever universe he exists in. With him she’s always talking about school, about that assignment she needs to get done, about that class she really likes. She doesn’t want to involve him in skating because it feels a bit like a world he’ll never properly exist in. And sometimes she thinks he doesn’t really care about it.

But, right now, it’d kind of be nice to have someone with her, have someone following behind her or beside her as she goes towards the kitchen, someone who hears Harry and Kat fighting too, who sees them pointing and fingers and yelling across the island. It’d be nice to know if she’s imagining it or not. It’d be nice to have someone to pull her away, to keep her from staring.

Too bad that person isn’t there.

Kat’s laughing, humorlessly, her mouth turned up in a sort of sneer. “God, Harry do you think I’m blind?” she yells, and he scoffs in response. Allie feels frozen in place.

“No, I think you’re fucking insane, Kat,” he says, his face fixed firmly with a glare.

Kat inhales sharply, shaking her head like she can’t believe what’s going on. “Fuck you, Harry. We’re done.” She pushes past a small crowd of people who’ve appeared in the last few seconds, stopping for just a moment in front of Allie. Kat narrows her eyes at her, looking her up and down before laughing again. “God, of course you’re here. He’s all yours, Al,” she says finally, stretching out the syllables and lining them with disdain.

Allie once again wishes that she had someone else beside her.

The crowd disappears slowly until it’s just the two of them, she and Harry, Pressman and Bingham, standing in Luke’s kitchen. He’s holding a can of beer, but he hasn’t opened it yet. Staring at the ground, she doubts he spots her approaching.

“You okay?” she asks softly, and his head jerks up. 

“You saw that?”

She blinks over at him, moves to sit beside him on the counter. “A little.”

He snorts wryly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Her eyes flit across his face. “You sure?” she asks, and he grabs one of her hands, leveling a small smile at her.

“Positive, Pressman.”

Her breath is caught in her throat, but that doesn’t really seem to matter. “Good.” And in the background, a Phoebe Bridgers song is playing, probably put on by Helena. It’s another thing that seems wrong for this party, but that doesn’t stop Allie from pulling Harry with her off the counter.

“What are you doing?” he asks, almost tired. She grabs his other hand and takes a step closer to him.

“This is my favorite song,” she tells him, and he sighs.

This is how they always end up, swaying along to some song they can barely hear, separated from the real party. This is how it’s always been… _I have emotional motion sickness._

And this is how it always goes, his hand on her cheek, rubbing circles into her skin, leaning in a little too close, things suddenly feeling like too much.

“Harry, I--” she protests, but it’s weak at best.

“Do you really think he’s right for you?” Harry asks, and she forces herself to meet his stare. It feels like he’s studying her, searching for a lie she hasn’t told yet.

“Did you really think she was right for you?”

“No,” he says, and it sounds easy as it falls out of his mouth. Her lips part, and he leans even closer, his eyes flitting up and down her face. It takes all she has to step back, to hide how much she’s shaking, to tug her hands from his… _I try to stay clean and live without._

“Thanks for dancing with me, Harry,” she says, and he looks tired now, looks tired as he offers her a small smile.

“Anytime, Allie.”

-

Helena spends three nights in a row at their place and Allie doesn’t ask any questions. She doesn’t think it’s her place to ask any questions, not when she wakes up for early morning practice and finds Elle right there beside Helena on the couch, not when Harry’s waiting out front to drive her to the rink because there’s still a chill in the mornings and Lexie spent an hour last week lecturing everyone on how harmful driving is to the environment. Not when Allie still doesn’t know what to think about anything, about anyone sometimes. Not when she’d still risk way too much for a boy she thought she could let go.

And last week, late at night, that salt lamp Allie bought off Amazon the source of light in her room, Elle had come in, maybe in tears, probably in tears. She’d said, “I think I love her,” and Allie had understood.

“It’s not fair,” Elle had said. “It’s not fair that…”

“Yeah, yeah it’s not fair,” Allie said softly, softly then because it was dark and late. Softly because that was what felt right. Softly. “I’m sorry Elle.”

Sitting in Harry’s car, that’s all she can really think about. She can’t imagine it, not really, not entirely. There’s a ring on Helena’s finger that’s from Beijing, and there’s a way that everyone thinks it’s supposed to go. And, God, everyone’s always thinking things need to go a certain way.

If things had gone the way everyone thought they would, Allie would have an Olympic gold medal, and she’d have him too. If things had gone the way everyone thought they would, maybe she’d be happy, completely happy, and maybe they’d still be okay, instead of this version of them that’s only half right.

When she skates with Harry, things almost feel right. That’s as close as she gets now to something like happiness. When he asks if she wants to grab breakfast, or brunch, or whatever that morning meal is called when you’ve been up since five, and she wants to chase that feeling, she wants to convince herself that they’re still living in the past. She says yes.

“You still think a lot about fate?” she asks, spearing a strawberry with her fork. Harry’s slicing into a piece of quiche, broccoli and bacon and cheddar. She thinks that Pffiefer would kill her if she even thought about taking a bite of that. At eight, she didn’t know that shit like that came with her dreams.

He shrugs. “Yeah, sometimes.” She nods. He catches her stare and pushes the plate of quiche closer to her, picking a blueberry out of her fruit cup as though that’ll mean she has to take a bite. She shakes her head. He sighs.

“Did I tell you about how Will came up to me at the rink?” Harry asks, staring right at her, right through her. She shakes her head. “He came up to me the other day and said something about how this was how it was always meant to be.”

She tries to exhale. She finds it suddenly difficult. “He did?”

Harry nods. She can’t tell if he’s lying, if this all just made up, meant to fit into that idealized version of the two of them she can’t seem to get out of her mind. “Yep. Said that it was always meant to be him and Gwen and you and me.”

There’s a lot of things right now that she wants to say. Most of all, though, she wants to bring up Helena and Elle, because that’s all she can really seem to think about, how no one’s ever that they were meant to be and how that’s so fucking _unfair._ And she wants to cry, wants to cry because her life is close to everything she’d ever dreamed of, so fucking close, and she still hates it.

Instead, she says, “Maybe he’s right,” her words feeling more like a question than a real statement.

“Fate,” Harry says, bold and loud, and it makes her laugh. She picks her fork up and finally takes that bite of quiche. 

He drives her back to her place, a to-go box of quiche and pastries that Harry had forced into her arms sitting in her lap, her fingers running over the top of the lid over and over. He keeps glancing at her, his eyes flitting between her and the road almost dangerously. 

“You doing anything later, Pressman?” he finally asks, staring almost unabashedly this time as they sit at a stop sign. She looks down at her hands, and this forces her gaze up at him. 

“Yeah, I actually--” she pauses. She could say no. She could ask why he wants to know. She could let him take her over to the pier, or into Detroit, and she could let them pretend that they’re still just eighteen, brand new to whatever all of this is. Or--

Or she could stop pretending. “I have a date tonight.”

That sharp look, the one that’s harsh and bitter, the one that makes her think he’s about to say something cruel, flashes across his face. Pulling up to the curb outside her house, he’s silent. He’s silent still as she moves to open the car door.

“Well have fun, Allie.”

She forces herself to look him in the eye. He still looks too harsh. “I’ll try.”

(Helena’s making lunch, or maybe breakfast, when Allie walks inside. Allie feels a little like crying. She throws the to-go box away.)

-

It’s a bit last minute, but Henry convinces her to come as his date to some dinner his dad’s engineering firm is hosting.

“I just want you there,” he’d said, and she hadn’t brought up how he’s never there for her because that’s just as much her fault as it is his, that separation. And maybe he could try a little harder to break through, maybe he _should_ try a little harder. Whatever.

She wears some old yellow dress she’d worn only one other time, to a banquet after Nationals last year, and those earrings too, the pearl ones, even though they don’t match at all. While Henry drives, she rubs them, over and over, tugging at her ear. A couple of times, he looks like he might ask what’s wrong, but he doesn’t. She hates how long she sits waiting for the question.

Inside, before the dinner has properly started, Henry introduces her to his dad. “This is Allie,” he says, and she pastes on that smile that’s almost exclusively for press conferences. All of this feels a bit like a press conference. “She’s a student at the University.”

Allie glances over at Henry, tilts her head just slightly before turning her focus back. “I skate, too,” she adds. It feels like something she can’t not mention. She wonders why Henry didn’t. No, she knows why Henry didn’t.

“Oh,” his dad says, his eyebrows raised as though she’s just told some stupid joke. “As a hobby?”

“No, I have an Olympic medal. It’s… it’s pretty far past _hobby_.”

“Well good for you.” It feels like he’s mocking her, like she’s a child he’s just appeased with some half hearted praise. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. It matters that Henry doesn’t care about this whole side of her life. It matters that he’s never seen her skate. It matters that he’s trying to imagine a future with her that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to see.

So she breaks up with him, sitting shotgun in his car, parked right outside her house. It’s easy. She doesn’t feel anything when he blinks over at her asking if that’s really what she wants. She doesn’t feel anything when she says yes.

And later, while she’s eating a vanilla ice cream cone from that shop on the corner, she realises that suddenly, she almost feels okay.

-

Harry’s driving her home from practice. She tells him over and over that she can just walk, that it’s no big deal, that it’s nice outside for the first time in ages, unseasonably warm. He doesn’t listen.

“Just get in the car, Pressman,” he says, exasperatedly, but he’s smiling too, down at the ground as he opens in the door for her.

And she hates to admit it, hates to admit that sitting shotgun in Harry’s expensive car is comforting, hates to admit that he reminds her of happy things, of driving around when they should be asleep, of skipping practice to go into the city, of ice cream runs, and stupid parties and the fact that he acted as her personal chauffeur for those first couple years they were here.

So, yeah, of course she gets in the car.

“You going to Luke and Helena’s wedding?” he asks, and she laughs, surprised, leaning back in her seat and tilting her head towards him. He looks proud, so fucking proud that he made her laugh so quickly and her heart skips a beat.

“Of course I’m going. I’m in the bridal party. It’s kinda required that I’m there. You know that.”

He glances over at her for a half a second before turning out of the parking lot. At least he looks a little sheepish. “Forgot, I guess. So, are you bringing a date, that one guy?”

She swallows hard. “Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“No, we,” she looks over at him, at his profile, at how his gaze is fixed on the road but hopeful, somehow. It’s hopeful. “We broke up.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding her head, waiting a moment for him to say something else. They’re almost to her house, only a street away, only a stop sign away, and she reaches over to turn up the music, Harry Styles singing about summer and strawberries. 

And there’s something about the way he grabs her arm just as she moves to get out of the car, something about his grip, how it’s soft, how it forces her to go still. “You’re okay?”

She takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

It’s nice to be able to say that out loud and mean it.

-

Allie’s standing at the front of the church with the other bridesmaids when Helena runs out a minute after reaching the altar, her dress hiked up just barely as she moves much faster than she should be able to in those heels. 

Elle’s the one to follow her out.

And they’re all standing there, their entire group, trying to figure out what happens next. Lexie’s whispering something to Gwen, and Jason keeps elbowing Clark, and Grizz is trying to talk to Luke who looks surprised and shocked and hurt, but not enough for Allie to think he didn’t at least sort of see this coming. 

Harry’s staring at her. God, of course he's staring at her. And of course she’s staring back.

“Do you think we still get cake?” she asks him, leaning in close to get away with a whisper.

“Who cares about cake-- I spent two hundred dollars on their gift,” he whines, and Grizz elbows Harry sharply in the ribs. When he winces, Allie grins, and Harry still has it in him to smile back.

Neither Elle nor Helena are responding to anyone’s texts or calls. At some point, once most of Helena’s family has left, Luke pulls his tie off and raises a bottle, says something about not letting all of this go to waste. And he’s swiping at his eyes, Grizz and Clark right beside him. Allie can’t tell if she feels like this was or wasn’t the way it was meant to go. 

“You think they’re okay?” Harry asks, pushing a slice of wedding cake towards her. Allie nods.

“Yeah, I think they are.”

She inhales slowly, looking down at the cake before tilting her head back and staring at him. “You wanna along the boardwalk? The sun hasn’t set yet, and I bet that ice cream parlor is open.”

Harry doesn’t seem to think before he nods. “Sure.”

-

The boardwalk along the edge of Lake St. Claire is full of people.

Harry’s holding the ice cream cone, trying to maneuver it so it doesn’t melt onto his hand. And she feels a little silly, all dressed up, her heels in hand as they walk. People keep staring, and she feels a little silly, and she doesn’t at all care.

“I feel bad for Luke,” she says, staring straight ahead at the sunset. She wonders why it never looks this pretty during the winter, why the colors always seem a little muted, why the sunsets never seem to be quite as vivid as they are right now, the colors swirling throughout the sky, a mess of pastels. 

“I feel bad for Helena,” Harry says. “But everything will be alright.”

“I hope so.”

Harry tosses the cone in the trash and grabs her hand with sticky fingers, pulling her towards the beach. He’s still wearing his dress shoes, which makes her laugh. The sand is cold beneath her feet, and the water is even colder. She wonders how long they’d have to stand just like this for the stars to appear above their heads. She wonders if she could get him to point out constellations for her.

“You know what I was most excited for about the wedding?” Harry asks wistfully. 

Allie rolls her eyes. “The cake?”

“Dancing with you.”

“We dance all the time, Harry,” she says gently. “It’s our job, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know,” he murmurs, pausing for a beat, thoughtful. “I think I always just wanna dance with you.”

Her hearts beating so loud in her chest, and those words-- she’s not sure what to do with them besides carry them with her for forever.

“We could dance right now,” she offers, a small smile on her face that’s only ever been meant for him. 

Standing on the beach, under a sky full of stars, they dance along to nothing. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. And, at the end, when a wave crashes behind them, when he asks “Can I?” so soft that she almost doesn’t hear, she thinks once again that this was how it was always meant to be.

-

Allie knows exactly what she’s thinking when she asks if he wants to come inside just as they pull up in front of the house. She knows exactly what she’s thinking when he gives her that grin, that smirk, that _look._ She knows exactly what she’s thinking when she starts unbuttoning his shirt, what she’s thinking when her dress comes off, when they’re right next to her bed and his mouth is on her neck.

She knows exactly what she’s thinking.

-

They’re lying in her bed. She’s wearing that cotton t-shirt, the one with the hole in the collar, the one that’s faded and soft and still somehow smells like him. 

“Harry,” she says softly. The room is dark. It reminds her of summer, of open windows, of the moon shining bright through curtains, of the sound of the ocean. She thinks of glow in the dark stars pressed up high. She wonders if she’ll ever feel that free again. “It’s not like this with anyone else.”

And his fingers are dancing over her bare skin, light, tracing patterns against her. He’s quiet. She thinks she can hear the city outside. “No,” he finally says, “no it’s not.” And then, after more silence, “I think we’ll be alright.”

Yeah, maybe they’ll be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that last bit is pretty heavily inspired by 'normal people' by sally rooney. i'm in love w that book rn which might explain a lot of this chapter.
> 
> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hallieownsme)
> 
> the last chapter should be up sooner rather than later. hopefully.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stars up above have always reminded him of her. That hasn’t changed. He doubts it ever will.
> 
> -
> 
> _or harry and allie and how it all comes to end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's over. thanks for sticking around to the end. i'll miss writing this.
> 
> (the biggest of thanks to [backfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire) / [dystopians](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing this for me. it is because of her that any of this makes sense.)

**PART FIVE. (the end… finally)**

-

**alternatively.**

-

She was seven, and he was eight.

Their moms tell the story with loud voices to anyone who’ll listen, and Harry knows it by heart. He knows that he was eight, and she was seven, and that they were tiny back then, the youngest in the entire competition. He remembers barely being able to see over the boards, feeling like a speck on the ice. He remembers her hand in his, holding on so tight.

She was seven, and he was eight, and he remembers Allie turning to him, already so determined. “I wanna win,” she had said, and he hadn’t hesitated before responding. 

“Me too.”

…

That’s how it could’ve gone. Most of the time, that’s how he thinks it should’ve gone. Or wishes, at least. In some other world, it’s perfect right from the start.

-

**vii.**

-

It’s quiet when he wakes up.

The window is still open, and the air is cold, and everything smells a bit like her. And it’s quiet, so fucking quiet.

He’s lying there in her bed, and it’s quiet, and everything smells like her, which is a a scent he could only really place once it wasn’t always just _there_ , once everything around him stopped smelling like summer, like her perfume or shampoo or lotion, sweet and sharp and maybe floral. He didn’t realize he’d miss it until it was gone.

And he’s never told her this, but maybe he should’ve, maybe he should’ve mentioned it back then, back when she was just starting to slip away, but—

God, he always knew that he would miss _her_ as soon as she was gone. He just didn’t really know what that meant then.

It’s quiet when he wakes up, and she’s gone.

The covers are folded back on her side of the bed, the sheets wrinkled, that shirt she was wearing last night, the old cotton one he remembers watching her pack forever ago now, laying somewhere on the ground. He wonders when summer became _forever ago_. Probably as soon as it ended.

That shouldn’t matter anymore. Here’s what should matter: they slept together last night for the first time since… and now she’s gone, which is probably more telling than he’d care to admit.

Harry rolls over onto her pillow. He closes his eyes. It’s so fucking quiet.

-

There’s a note on the kitchen counter that reads something about a run, and he feels stupid for ever worrying. He feels stupid for searching for her around the house— her house, her house that’d he’d never even been to before last night. He’s supposed to be her best friend, how the fuck does that work?— feels stupid for peeking around corners and opening closet doors as if she’s hiding, as if Allie Pressman has ever been one to hide.

There’s a note on the kitchen counter— _gone for a run. be back soon._ — and Harry wonders why he didn’t check there first. There’s this small part of him that wonders if he even wanted to find the note, wonders if he maybe wanted her to be gone.

He doesn’t want to think about that.

Standing in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, playing with the edges of the paper, staring at the place where the pen smudges, Harry tries hard not to think about the million things he probably should be thinking about. He opens the window above the sink because she likes fresh air and starts a pot of coffee.

Weirdly, everything in her kitchen already feels familiar to him.

And he’s grabbing two mugs out of the cabinet, one gray and one white, one reading _covfefe_ and the other blank, when she slips in through the back door, playing with that purple Fitbit she got from her parents for Christmas. 

Her face is bright pink, and he can hear her breathing, and her hair is falling out of its braid, and the bobby pins meant to pull back her bangs, the ones she’s been trying to grow out for months now, are lopsided, but, God, he thinks she looks beautiful. He doubts there’s ever a moment in which he doesn’t think that. 

“Oh, hey,” she says when she looks up to find him, and her voice almost sounds bright. “When’d you get up?”

“Twenty minutes ago. I’m making coffee.”

She smiles. “I can see that. You like the covfefe mug? Helena got it for us— Elle and I, I mean. Think it was meant to be a gag gift, but...” she shrugs, pushing her hair behind her ears. 

And he feels a bit like laughing, would laugh, maybe, if he could find it in himself to breathe again. Because she hates running, and that’s something he should’ve remembered. And suddenly he remembers summer and him dragging her out in the mornings to run along the beach as the sun rose. He remembers them running through the city streets at night that first year in Canton, the air so cold sometimes it felt blue. He remembers running down a hotel hallway, the taste of gold still in his mouth, her hand in his, and that look she gave him, how everything seemed to slow down.

He remembers it all— everything all at once— and it’s hard to breathe.

“Yeah,” he finally says, “I like the mug.”

She’s staring over at him curiously, her head titled just barely to the side like she’s trying to figure something out, and he wonders if she remembers it all too, remembers things the same way he does, bright and happy and loud. “Good. I think I’m gonna take a quick shower,” she says. “And then, maybe…”

“Breakfast,” he offers, and she nods.

“Yeah, sure. Breakfast.”

He thinks about how it hasn’t even been a year since that summer in the Hamptons. And he thinks about how back then he would’ve grinned up at her and asked if there was room for one more in the shower. He thinks about how she would’ve laughed, would’ve rolled her eyes at him, about how she would’ve shrugged and said, “Maybe, Bingham,” all light and easy.

That’s the thing, everything was light and easy back then. And now… now he feels a bit like he’s trying to chase that feeling. It was one thing, last night, at the wedding, after the wedding, after Helena and Elle left, one thing then to walk along that boardwalk, one thing to eat ice cream and dance with her in the sand, one thing to look down at her and _pretend_ like they were _something_ all over again. 

It was one thing to say that they’d be alright. It’s a whole other thing to try to force that to be true.

-

Allie’s wearing a sundress, and it makes sense— it’s almost summer. The weather is starting to warm up again. But, God, she’s wearing a sundress, and he thinks that maybe the last time he saw her in it was… 

It doesn’t matter. He’s staring.

She’s using a towel to dry her hair, and stepping towards him, towards the kitchen, all over again, reaching for his cup of coffee even though he made her her own. “You still wanna get breakfast?” she asks. “Or we could stay in? How do you feel about oatmeal? Or maybe pancakes? There’s this recipe for banana pancakes that Elle always makes.”

He takes a deep breath. He can’t figure out how things feel so simultaneously new and normal, so simultaneously right and wrong. “Can you make them without burning the house down, Pressman?” he asks, trying so desperately hard to keep his tone light. When she laughs, he thinks that maybe he did okay.

“That’s why you’re here, Bingham.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Oh, so I’m just your personal chef now, huh?”

She laughs again. “Maybe.”

He sighs dramatically, and she tosses her towel at him, grinning in a way that feels a bit like before. He wraps the towel around her shoulders and pulls her closer to him. She’s still grinning, and—

God, is it wrong how much all of this feels like the past? It feels a bit like they’re about to make the same mistakes all over again. And is it wrong how willing he is to do that, to do everything wrong all over again just to try to catch that feeling he had during those two months, because here’s something else he probably should’ve told Allie: he really did think for a little while that those two months could’ve been forever.

“Find me the recipe?” he asks, so close to her that their noses are nearly brushing.

“Yeah,” she breathes out, “sure.”

And it does feel like the past, it feels like standing in the kitchen with the back door open, the ocean so close that they can hear it. And he almost thinks that he’ll find sand on the ground or under his fingernails. Almost.

He wants to kiss her, and he thinks that maybe she wants him to kiss her too.

With the sun in his eyes, he takes a step back, and she doesn’t move with him. Later, they eat banana pancakes drenched in maple syrup and don’t talk about what happened the night before. Yeah, things are exactly like the past.

-

He’s not sure what time it is. It’s late enough for the sun to be gone, late enough for the streetlights to have switched on, late enough for his eyes to be just a little bit heavy. It’s late enough for him to know that he’s not leaving, not tonight.

She doesn’t ask him to stay, but—

They ordered pizza from that one place he really likes and are watching some Netflix Original on her parents account, and maybe he just doesn’t want to leave. Maybe.

He forgot how easy it was to waste a day with her. And he forgot that it never feels like a waste.

She’s got her head on his shoulder. “Helena and Elle are in Hawaii,” she says softly, almost as if it’s a secret. Maybe it is a secret, but who’s he going to tell?

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I guess that’s where it all started for them. I don’t know when they’re coming home.”

“Did you see it coming?” he asks because he remembers the look on Allie’s face when Helena ran away, the look on her face when Elle followed. It hadn’t looked like shock. Almost pride. Almost happy.

Allie shrugs a little. “I don’t know,” she says after a moment, turning away from the TV. Harry had forgotten it was even on. “It’s just… they’re competitors, you know? They’re competitors and they’re gonna try to make something work, and…” There’s something suddenly heavy in the air between them, something about a what-if. He tries not to think about what-ifs anymore, but they’re everywhere.

“We were competitors once,” he eventually says, and she nods.

“Yeah, yeah we were.” She pauses, her eyes flitting away from his. “Would you leave someone at the altar for me?” she jokes, laughing a little, and he tries to laugh with her, but—

“In a heartbeat.”

She tilts her head to the side, studying him curiously. “Me too,” Allie murmurs, so soft that he barely catches it. “I’m glad we’re not competitors anymore.”

Sometimes, he can go months forgetting that Allie wasn’t his first partner. Sometimes he forgets that it wasn’t always like this. Sometimes he forgets that once upon a time it was even more complicated than this. “Me too.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I could actually do it by myself,” she says lightly, almost casually, and he can’t seem to look away.

“Do what?”

She shrugs again, mostly to herself this time. “Skate. Live, probably. Be here.”

He pauses. And then, “Why not?”

“I think,” she starts slowly, blinking up at him. “I think I’m just afraid of being alone,” she finally admits, and Harry sighs. 

“That’s not a very good reason to keep someone around, Allie,” he says softly, and she leans even farther into him, playing with the hem of his shirt.

“I know,” she breathes out. “I know.”

He wants to ask her what that means for them, if he’s only there so she’s not alone. He wants to ask her if that’s how it’s always been, if that’s why it started, back in Greenwich. He wants to ask her if they were only ever something— friends, partners, whatever the fuck they were that summer— because _she’s afraid of being alone_. 

He doesn’t ask her anything. He thinks he’s afraid of the answer.

-

Again, she’s gone by the time he wakes up. Her side of the bed is cold, and the window is open, and everything still smells like her. He takes a shower and uses her shampoo and makes a cup of coffee, staring at that mug that’d made her laugh.

There’s another note on the kitchen counter that says something about a run. In black pen, he adds at the bottom a few quick words about how he’s grabbing some stuff from his place, and then grabs his keys out of the dish by the front door and drives the five minutes it takes to get from her house to his apartment.

He doesn’t know how long he’s going to stay with her. Maybe just until Elle and Helena come back. Maybe forever. Maybe he’ll slowly move in, maybe they’ll start going grocery shopping together, maybe he’ll help choose a new coffee table, maybe he’ll let this place become home.

Is it really so bad that he wants that?

Because when he thinks about it, home has only ever really been where she is. And he wonders if it’s like that for her too. He wonders if she realizes that.

Barely under a year ago, home was in the Hamptons, on the beach, in the summer house, eating ice cream out on the pier. Home was the sun-bleached highlights in her hair and the freckles on the bridge of her nose and—

He drives by her running in the bike lane and rolls down the window, slowing to a stop as she notices he’s there. She’s grinning over at him, and it’s bright, and it makes him happy, makes him forget about that sense of déjà vu.

“You want a ride, Pressman?” he calls out, leaning his elbow on the center console, and she bites the edge of her lip, looking amused if nothing else.

“Nah,” she eventually says, “I just wanna get one more mile in. I’ll see you at home, though.”

 _Home._ Yeah, home.

(The last time he got this close to her, things fell apart. Maybe he should be focusing on that. Maybe it’s wrong of him to not.)

-

The next morning, she makes them smoothies before they go to the gym for a day of conditioning. She kisses him on the cheek after he finds her water bottle and stands between his legs as he reads out Pfeiffer’s schedule for them for this next week.

They make-out like teenagers in his car in the parking lot of the gym, and he wishes he could read the look on her face as they pull apart. 

He’s halfway out the door when she suddenly asks, “We can do this, right?”

And he doesn’t mean to hesitate, but there’s still a moment when... God, he just needs to think. “Yeah.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him, and he wonders if he really believes his words either. He still goes back to her place after.

-

Their skating is a mess.

Pfeiffer is yelling something at them that Harry isn’t listening to, and Allie’s staring down at the ice, leaning against a board advertising a local restaurant that they used to eat at before. He’s trying not to stare, but he thinks he might always be trying not to stare. He thinks he’s complete shit at not staring at her.

And he’s upset because all of this is so fucking stupid. It’s stupid that it feels like they can’t skate when they _can_ , when they’ve been skating together for years. And it’s stupid that he wants to blame her, wants to blame himself for taking a chance and chasing a feeling and searching for something that he lost last year.

He’s just upset.

And so— “You keep hesitating on the lift,” he snaps at her, and he wants to take it back as soon as he sees the look on her face, wants to take it back as soon as the words leave his mouth. But maybe they’re just communicating. Maybe this is just how they’re supposed to communicate on the ice now. 

Because faintly, he remembers her telling him that sometimes it feels like they can’t have both— a relationship and a gold medal. Suddenly he realizes where exactly that idea comes from. He wonders if it’s really true. He wonders if there’s a way to want that gold medal more, just like how she does.

“Sorry,” she finally says, slowly, forcefully, sarcastically. Pfeiffer is quiet now. “Do you want to just try it again?”

It’s not really a question. Everything feels too sharp. “Sure.”

The music starts again. She slips out of the lift, and he down topples with her, and Pfeiffer yells out _no, no, no_ so loudly that it echoes around the rink, drawing the attention of nearby skaters. And Harry stares up at the rafters, up at the American flag, tries to imagine the pressure disappearing, tries to figure out what the fuck is going wrong. He can only barely see her out of the corner of his eye, but Allie turns to face him, her head tilted to the side like she’s trying to make sense of him, of everything.

 _Yeah,_ he wants to say, _I don’t know what to do either._

-

Later, they stand side by side in the locker room. A bruise is blossoming in streaks of purple on her right shin, and he wants to ask about it, but doesn’t. He doubts she wants to talk about it.

She’s staring into her locker. Someone carved their initials into it forever ago, before it was hers. He’d always joked that she should carve _A.P_ onto the side— so people remember that Harry Bingham’s partner once had this locker. She’d always laughed. She’d never actually done it.

“Maybe we can’t do this,” she says quietly, evenly, and he thinks for a moment that the words are just to herself. But then she looks over at him, expectant. Tired. 

“Can’t do what?” he finally asks, even though he thinks he already knows the answer. Even though he’s thinking the same thing.

“Have it both ways. Maybe we can’t—”

Harry inhales deeply, shaky and sharp. “It was one practice, Allie.”

“Maybe we should take a break,” she says suddenly, staring up at him. He blinks once, twice, three times…

“A break from what?” he asks, his words so soft that they’re barely there. She swallows.

“From this.” She pauses. “From skating.”

His mouth opens and then closes, nothing coming out. And she’s still staring up at him, waiting, but he doesn’t have anything to say. A break is… God, he doesn’t even know what that fucking means. He doesn’t want to know what that means.

A break sounds a bit like an end, and he’s not ready for any sort of ending yet.

-

With Allie, there have always been a lot of things Harry doesn’t want to think about. He ignores them, each reason why they wouldn’t ever work. Each reason why they shouldn’t even bother trying. Each reason why they failed.

He ignores them on purpose and pretends that he doesn’t, pretends that sometimes all he can think about _isn’t_ that summer, isn’t Allie tilting her head to the side and telling him she’s leaving again and again and _again_ like it’s the only real solution to a problem that they made up, and—

God, they’re supposed to just be alright. They should be alright by now.

-

They don’t talk while driving back to her place, the radio playing some Harry Styles song that Harry can’t bring himself to turn off… _and I get the feeling that you’ll never need me again_ …

They don’t talk, but he steals glances over at her, stares at her for seconds longer than he probably should, almost runs two red lights because he can’t get himself to look away. And it echoes, her words, _maybe we should take a break_ , echoes until it’s all he can really hear, the radio fading to static in the background.

And then they’re parked outside her house, and her words are still echoing, and she’s still quiet, and he’s waiting, waiting for her to get out of the car, waiting for her to bite the edge of her lip and motion for him to get out too, something like a smile on her lips as they pretend like she never said anything. God, they’re good at that, pretending.

He’s waiting for her to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him, waiting for her to tell him that _it’ll be worth it_ just like he told her forever ago. He hadn’t thought it’d be worth it then. He’d lied to her. He wants her to lie to him, to tell him that whatever they are is worth the price of a gold medal.

They’re parked outside her house, and he’s waiting, waiting waiting waiting for something, for anything, for—

“It would just be a year,” she says, and he thinks she might be crying; he’s afraid to look and see. “A year is— a year is nothing. It’d be nothing. We’d still have two more years to train for the Olympics. It wouldn’t matter.”

 _A year._ She wants a year off, just like she wanted two months off, two months of… “How long have you been thinking about this?” he asks, trying so hard to keep his voice even. It still wavers. He doesn’t turn to her.

“I don’t— I don’t know,” she breathes out, defensive suddenly. And she reaches out, grabbing his arm, forcing him to look her in the eye. She’s not crying, not yet, at least. Somehow that makes him feel worse. God, he just wants to start the car back up and drive down to that pier and dance with her in the sand and— “Since the wedding, maybe.”

“Since the wedding,” he echoes, trying hard to think about everything that’s happened in the days since then. He tries to search for clues in her behavior, in the way she’d gone for those runs, in her words, in her questions and her answers and everything else.

“It would just be a year, Harry,” she says softly, her eyes flitting around his face. “Just a year.”

He feels like he can’t breathe. “Why?”

“Because,” she inhales quickly, leaning her head back, blinking. “Because I can’t handle this anymore. Because I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, or why we’re doing it, or what I want. And I wanna go to Europe and not worry about some competition, and I wanna spend Christmas not thinking about Nationals or Worlds or Four Continents, and…” she turns to him, trailing off. There’s a tear falling down her cheek, and he almost reaches to wipe it away. Almost.

“I want my dreams to feel like they’re _mine_ again, Harry.”

He stares at her, completely still, willing the moment to fade away, willing himself to wake up from this. And it’s not a nightmare, it’s not. But it’s close. It’s everything falling apart all over again, just like before. Maybe it was a mistake to say they’d be alright. Maybe he spoke too soon. Maybe he jinxed things because—

God, maybe she didn’t say it, but the words are right there, right below the surface. _I just need to be away from you._

“Say something, please,” she pleads, her voice trembling. She moves to squeeze his hand, and he hold tight, holds on for dear life. 

“Why do you always do this, Allie?” he asks, and the words come out nearly sharp.

She lets out a soft exhale. “Do what?”

“Leave.”

Her eyes widen, and she blinks over at him, shocked, probably. He’s always been good at reading her, but right now everything feels wrong. Everything’s slipping. “Harry that’s— that’s not true.”

“Why can’t we have both?” he asks bitterly, the words falling out before he can think to stop. “Why can’t I have a shot at a gold medal and you? Why isn’t that possible? Who decided it wasn’t possible?”

“No one,” she says, and she’s crying now, properly, the tears falling down her face. He doesn’t think he’s ever been good with crying girls. Really, he doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to see her cry. “No one decided. It’s just— it’s obvious we can’t have both because whenever we try, we fuck something up and almost ruin things, and I don’t want to keep doing that.”

“And you think leaving’s going to help.”

“I’m not leaving, Harry. It’s just—”

“Yes you are,” he interrupts, harsh enough to make her flinch. “This is what you always do. You always have one foot out the door.”

She pulls away from him, wiping her face with the edge of her sleeve, her gaze suddenly fixed somewhere far away. He wishes he knew where. She closes her eyes for a moment. “Why don’t you ever ask me to stay?”

“Do you want me to?” he asks softly. She doesn’t say anything. He thinks that means _yes_.

It doesn’t matter. She gets out of the car, and he doesn’t follow.

-

Pfeiffer calls him early the next morning asking if Harry really wants a year off.

“I don’t think it really matters what I want,” he snaps, and the man sighs.

“Yes, it does. She’ll listen if you—”

“I want a year off,” Harry says before Pfeiffer can finish his sentence. He doesn’t want to hear what his coach has to say. He doesn’t care.

-

He packs up his apartment. It’s practically summer now, the sky a clear blue, the air just a little too warm. It’s practically summer, and just about everyone at the rink is getting ready to go home. He cleans out his locker and doesn’t mention anything about _a year off_ to anyone.

He thinks about emptying her locker too, taking the sticky notes with written reminders off the side and peeling off the stickers she’d press into the back. He thinks about carving her initials into the side but doesn’t really know how to do that.

And she’s left a hoodie in there, something plain and gray. He thinks about grabbing that too. Someone might use that locker next year. It’s not really hers anymore.

He leaves the hoodie behind and drives too fast back to his apartment and stares off the edge of the roof at what he once swore was pieces of the Detroit skyline. She said this was her favorite place in Canton. And, God, it was always her back then, always her beside him, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do without that, even if it’s only for… 

The air is warm, and the sun is up high in the sky, and for once in his life he dreads even the idea of summer. 

Tomorrow, he’ll drive home— West Ham. He’ll leave early in the morning, just as the sun is starting to rise, and he’ll follow whatever route Google maps gives him, no unnecessary stops or cheap hotel rooms with two too-small beds. It’s just him this time. It’s just going to be him for a little while.

-

His mom is happy to have him home.

The three of them— him, Sarah, and their mom— go out to some fancy restaurant in New Haven for dinner that first day back. He wants to tell them that he's exhausted, but then Sarah looks up at him with something like adoration in her eyes, and he suddenly can’t seem to find the words.

“How’s Allie?” Karen asks, once, twice, three times, and Harry can’t seem to find the words then either. 

(He dated Kat for months and never even thought about taking her home and introducing her to his family. He thought it was because he was busy, but…)

They talk about the weather, about the dance classes Sarah is taking and the college classes Harry was supposed to take. He thinks about mentioning how Allie’s enrolled part time at the University of Michigan, how one day she might be a journalist. Maybe he’d follow her into that world too.

Sarah eats half of his slice of chocolate cake, and his mom smiles at him like she’s proud or something, even though it was a silver medal that he brought home last year, a silver medal that he keeps hidden in his sock drawer, and Harry thinks that he really could find a way to be happy here.

-

He misses her.

It’s a bit like before, before when they got back to Canton after those two months. Before, when he dropped her off at the airport, the car still running, the word _stay_ right on the edge of his tongue.

But back then he still had her. He still saw her almost every day. He still got to stand just a little too close, still got to pretend that things were okay, that things were different, that they hadn’t fucked up.

And now she’s gone— properly gone, somewhere far away— and he just fucking misses her. 

He thinks about texting her. He thinks about it when he stands in the front hallway, next to those pictures she’d stared at once upon a time, always missing the ones of her— of them. He thinks about it while sitting beside the pool, Sarah swimming laps back and forth, laying in a patio chair until the sun falls from the sky.

The stars up above have always reminded him of her. That hasn’t changed. He doubts it ever will.

He thinks about texting her, and then he thinks about calling her, because when exactly have written words ever been enough for him? When exactly has only part of her ever been enough for him?

-

It’s almost funny. He gets recognized at a grocery store, some girl stopping him in the produce section, pulling up a picture of him on her phone. 

“Is this you?” she asks, her tone implying she already has her answer.

He’s so tired. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s me.”

And she’s not mocking him, but it sure feels like it when she says, “Congrats on the silver.” And then, “Where’s Allie?”

He tries to breathe as he mutters a “thanks,” taking a picture with the girl. He doesn’t answer her other question, and he’s absolutely positive that she notices but… God, he’s just so tired.

-

Kelly calls him in July.

“I heard that you’re home for the summer,” she says. “You wanna get lunch sometime?”

He can’t remember the last time he saw her, the last time he heard her voice, even. And he remembers their promises to keep in touch after she left for New York. He’d almost bought a ticket to one of her shows last year. Was so close. He forgets why that didn’t work out.

Faintly, he wonders if that’s how it’ll be with Allie one day: him forgetting what it’s like to be near her even though once upon a time it’d been as easy as breathing.

“Sure,” he says, without really thinking. “There’s this café…”

Sitting in the corner booth reminds him of being seventeen. She— Kelly Aldrich— reminds him of it too. Her smile, something light and firm and unchanged by time, reminds him of it. The way she laughs when they can’t stop staring at one another. The way the menus look exactly the same. Everything reminds him of being too young to realize that there was a whole different future just waiting for him.

“So you come here often?” she finally jokes, tilting her head to the side, her fingers playing with the plastic menu cover.

“It’s nice to see you.”

She nods, her smile still so bright, creasing at the corners of her mouth. “You too, Harry. And you’re good, right? Michigan is good? Skating is good?”

He thinks the answer might be _no_ , but he can’t imagine saying that. Instead, he nods. “Yeah, things are good. I’m good.”

Kelly blinks over at him, waits for a moment before asking, “And Allie? How is she doing?”

He shrugs a little. “I’m sure she’s doing good.”

Kelly raises her eyebrows. “Is something going on between you two?” she asks slowly, carefully, and Harry tries hard to choose the right thing to say next.

“We’re just… we’re on a break right now.”

“A break?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” he says, forcing any sort of bitterness out of his voice, “for a year. A break from skating. I think she’s off in Europe right now.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“You know,” Kelly says after a moment, leaning forward just slightly, her elbow resting on the table, her chin in her palm, “I watched you guys perform during the Olympics. It was… I don’t think we ever skated like that, Harry.”

He lets out the breath he’d been holding in, hesitates for a moment, and then says softly, a bit like it’s a secret he can’t remember ever promising to keep, “I don’t think I’ve ever skated with anyone like I skate with her.”

And Kelly smiles over at him, something small. “It’s good that I didn’t follow you to Canton, then, and it’s good that it’s you two. Sometimes I… I don’t know. It’s just, watching you two skate, I know I made the right decision.”

“And ballet?” he prompts, trying to push the conversation off the ice. He’s not sure how much longer he can spend talking about skating. About Allie.

Kelly smiles a little, almost entirely to herself. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“Do you ever miss it?” he asks evenly, his heart settling back in his chest, and she shrugs, almost carelessly.

“No, not really. I mean, I missed you, and I missed the rink, and I missed home, but… no, I never missed skating.” She pauses, stares over at him. “I can’t imagine you not missing it.”

And before he can think things through, “I miss her more,” slips out of his mouth, the words falling in a rush, like they couldn’t stay in any longer.

Kelly’s smile turns small and sad, sympathetic and quiet and soft. “So, you really love her, huh, you really love Allie?” she asks, a bit like she already knows the answer, like it’s not a surprise at all, like that’s how everyone thought it’d always go. Like it’s just what makes sense. Harry’s not sure what to say.

He pauses, staring over at her, exhaling before asking, as seriously as he can, “You wanna split a slice of peach pie with me?” And she laughs, rolling her eyes and leaning back a little, like she’s trying to take in the moment. For a minute, it’s almost like time hasn’t passed. Like things haven’t changed. Like they’re seventeen again and each right on the edge of something big.

-

Kelly makes him promise to stay in touch.

“New York isn’t too far from Canton,” she jokes, and then, softer than what came before, “and you could bring Allie. I’d like to see her too.”

He bites his tongue, and nods, and swallows back that familiar feeling of bitterness and longing and everything else that comes along with missing Allie Pressman.

-

In August, Sarah finally forces him to go to the rink in Greenwich to watch her skate.

He only says yes because it’s one of those days, the mercury slipping up past a hundred. It’s only because he needs to get out of the house and doesn’t know what to do around here anymore. It’s only because it’s Sarah, and he feels guilty for not seeing her more.

Nothing about the rink in Greenwich has changed.

And it feels tiny now, which it hadn’t before, not really, not properly. It feels tiny and cramped, and suddenly he feels a bit like he can’t breathe as he stands behind the boards and watches Sarah spin and spin and spin, over and over again until she comes out of it giggling.

“Come skate with me, Harry,” she calls out, and people turn to stare. Lynette’s off on the other side of the rink, coaching a pair. They can’t be older than thirteen. It makes his heart ache for a simpler time.

He swallows all of that down. “Can’t, Sarah,” he says, and she scrunches up her face at him. “Forgot my skates.”

“But next time?” she asks expectantly, and he’s reminded suddenly why he can’t seem to say no to his baby sister.

“Yeah, next time.”

And he’s still standing there a half hour later, Sarah skating through bits of her routine, when Lynette comes up to him, a broad smile on her face, her arms outstretched and pulling him in for a hug.

“It’s been forever,” she says, and he nods. “You and Allie have been doing good.”

It’s not a question. He can’t help the rush of pride he suddenly feels.

“Thanks.”

As Sarah grabs her stuff out of the changing rooms, he sits in the too small kitchenette and throws a clementine back and forth between his hands. There’s an old group picture stuck to the fridge from years ago, him and Allie and Kelly and Will all pressed close together and smiling brightly.

He tries to remember that feeling. He can’t.

-

A week later, Sarah asks him to take her to the rink again.

Harry says no.

-

Summer is just starting to fade when his mom asks him to check up on the Hamptons house.

And he wants to say no, is so close to saying it, but he can’t seem to say the word, no, can’t, because suddenly all he can think about is… _summer_ — Allie Pressman and the sun setting over the ocean and yellow hammocks and striped beach towels and glow in the dark star stickers pressed up high and _Allie Pressman_ , back when he had all of her.

God, for two months, he had all of her.

The word _yes_ falls out of his mouth as his mom asks the question for the second time. 

He drives out there with the top of the car down, an old _Strokes_ song playing just a bit too loud… _yeah, it hurts to say, but I want you to stay…_ He’s trying hard not to feel lonely. He’s trying hard to remember that it’s okay to be alone.

He’s trying to forget about the last time he made this drive.

-

He arrives just as the sun is starting to set, exploding into a million different shades and reflecting onto the ocean, a mess of purple and pink and orange. It makes him stop and stare. He takes a picture of it, because that’s what she’d always do, and she’s not here to do it now.

And he opens the front door, switches on the front hallway light, and stares down at a pile of mail.

There are summer catalogues and local newspapers and ads for restaurants opening in the downtown.

None of that matters.

Here’s what matters: there are ten postcards with his name on them. They make his heart stop. He knows immediately who they’re from.

-

_**June 15th. London.** It is yet to stop raining. Very gray here. reminds me of Canton._ The words are scribbled in blue pen on the back of a picture of Big Ben. They make him laugh for a half a second, if only purely from shock. It makes him want to cry.

 _ **June 25st. Lille.** All I did today was walk and shop and eat French pastries. My accent is still terrible. You'd make fun of me for it. You were always better at French._ Her handwriting treads carefully on the card, the letters sweeping into one another. It reminds him of her for some reason.

 _ **June 29th. Amsterdam.**_ The words are in sharpie, written hastily on the back of a copy of a Van Gogh. _Kept finding paintings that reminded me of you. This one didn’t, though. I think that’s why I chose it._

 _ **July 4st. Paris.** I’m back in France. My French is still complete shit. I feel a bit like a cliché. Thinking about buying a beret. Or at least sending one home to you. But only if you promise to wear it._ He forgot how easy it was to laugh at something she’d say. He tries to imagine her writing the words, maybe in some café, a cup of coffee beside her and a chocolate croissant because those were always her favorite. 

_**July 15th. Brussels.** Walked through the city at night with Cassandra. She flies home tomorrow, so I’ll be traveling alone. I think it’ll be good for me. Hopefully I don’t get mugged._ God, he misses her.

 _ **July 19th. Cologne.**_ On the back of a copy of a Picasso, she writes in pencil, the letters smudging together at the edges. _The river here almost reminds me of home, for some reason. Home as in Michigan. Not West Ham. Not anymore._

 _ **July 24th. Vienna.** There are a lot of palaces here. Mostly, I’ll just listen to classical music and walk through gardens. I’m getting used to being alone, but I made a friend on the train out here. They remind me a bit of you, which is a compliment, I promise._ He wishes he’d gone with her. He wishes it were them instead of just her. He wishes things were different.

 _ **August 3st. Venice.**_ Written on the back of a picture of the canals are three words that leave him breathless. _I miss you. I miss you. I miss you._

 _ **August 18th. Florence.** The entire time I’ve been here, all I can think about is how much you’d like it here. We’ll have to come back together sometime._ And he wants that, he wants to go places and see the world and he wants to do it with her. And maybe she was onto something with this _break_ , and maybe he should’ve listened. 

_**August 29th. Rome.** I fly home on the first of September. It’s weird to think this is all over soon. I hope you had a good summer. I hope we’re okay._

-

He holds the postcards close, staring at the words until they’re nothing more than a blur before his eyes, his fingers tracing over the ink. He’s not sure what to do with them, not sure why they’re here, not sure what she meant sending them to the Hamptons. 

And he wants to know. He wants to know if he was ever even supposed to see them. He wants to know how she is, and he wants to hear the sound of her voice, and he wants—

God, he wants her back.

And it’s three AM, and he thinks she might be traveling home right now, but that doesn’t really seem to matter, so he calls. He calls her.

-

The phone rings for what feels like forever. He thinks about hanging up. He rubs circles into the card from London. He tries to think.

“Hey, it’s Allie. I’m not here right now, so—” there’s a laugh in the background of the recorded message, and, oh— that’s him.

That was him.

That was him in their kitchen at the peak of summer, his head tucked into the crook of her neck as she tried to record a new message for her voicemail because Cassandra had called last night and been met with something automated. That was him saying something about how _nobody listens to these anyway_ as he kissed her jaw, as she laughed, something so fucking bright, as he reached across her to save the message, her protesting weakly, her not really caring, the air smelling like salt, and her skin warm, and—

That was him, and that was her, and that was them, and God, they’re so far away from that now that he has to take a moment to steady himself after remembering what it was like for there to be a _them._

He stares down at the pile of postcards. Suddenly, they seem so far away too, detached from him and Allie, from whatever they were. He doesn’t leave a message.

-

He goes up to his room because it’s late, and he’s tired, but then he switches the light on and those stickers are still pressed up high, and suddenly he can’t breathe all over again.

He sleeps in a guest bedroom that they never touched because every other room in the house reminds him of two months that are so far gone now. 

He keeps the postcards downstairs, as if that’ll help.

-

She texts him back a day later, and he doesn’t read it until he’s back in West Ham.

_[Allie]: just saw your call. is everything okay?_

He pauses. He stares at the message. He holds his breath.

_[Harry]: Everything’s fine. Just went back to the Hamptons to check up on the house, and I found your postcards in the mail. I just wanted to let you know._

_[Allie]: oh._

_[Allie]: was it nice there?_

He sends her that picture of the sunset he’d taken right when he first arrived, and stares at his phone waiting for her response. 

Minutes pass. And then hours. It never comes.

-

On his birthday, he gets drunk alone in his room off of old scotch he’d found in his dad’s office. He’s not sure why his mom never emptied out the room. Or maybe is sure why. God, he doesn’t know anymore.

On his birthday, he’s drunk enough to call her again. It’s an accident, but… no, it’s not an accident.

And he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for as the phone rings, doesn’t know until— until it’s _her_ , her voice on the other end, almost tired, almost worried, entirely _there_ in a way _she_ hasn’t been for months now.

“Harry?” she asks softly, and his heart stops beating in his chest, or maybe it starts again, for the first time since… He’s not quite sure. The postcards sit stacked on his desk across the room. He’s afraid to look at them.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, thinking he should move to end the call. Not wanting it to end at all.

“No,” Allie says evenly, “no, it’s fine. I mean… it’s your birthday, right?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out slowly. “It is.”

And he can almost hear her smile, something soft, something barely there. He can almost hear it. “Happy birthday, then.”

“Thanks.” And then: “Can I ask you something?”

She lets out a light exhale, going silent for a moment. “Harry, is everything—”

“You really did love me, right?” he asks, the question slipping out as if he’s in a rush to get away from it. And it’s answer is something he was once so sure of. Something he doesn’t know anymore. “Before. Because I loved you. I loved you so fucking much.”

“Harry,” she says again, “I— Yeah, I loved you. I loved you a lot. And I—” He holds his breath, counts to one, two, three... “Happy birthday, Harry. Sorry I didn’t call.”

She hangs up, and he throws his phone across the room. He doubts he’ll ever stop missing her. And hearing her voice— that wasn’t an accident so much as it was a mistake.

-

He thinks about buying them tickets to Sweden, about texting her the itinerary without context and wondering if she remembers his promise. _God, Pressman, I think I’d follow you just about anywhere._

The tab is open on his laptop. He doesn’t follow through.

He wonders if she still wears those earrings, the pearls, if she took them with her to Europe, or if they’re sitting in some jewelry box at home. He wonders if she really meant it when she wrote _I miss you_ over and over again. He wonders why he didn’t text that to her— doesn’t text that to her. He wonders why he hasn’t said more.

He wonders if he’s just afraid that she’ll leave all over again, some endless cycle that they can’t seem to slip out of.

-

In October, he flies out to Detroit to watch a Lions game with Grizz, Jason, and Luke. They get hotel rooms that overlook the downtown, and Harry tries not to think about running through the streets with Allie, him parked in a no parking zone, the air so cold that she kept saying it could snow.

The Lions lose. The four of them get dinner at some steak house. They don’t talk about the rink, about Helena and Elle, about him and Allie, about how things are there, ever since Harry’s been gone. And he almost asks once, twice, three times, when Jason off-handedly mentions some new skater he’s been seeing, when Luke talks about how he’s thinking about moving out to Washington to play for some hockey team, when Grizz says something about a coaching position he’s taken up with a youth hockey team.

But they stray away from the topics as soon as they appear, and the night ends, and suddenly he’s back at the hotel room he’s sharing with Grizz, the two of them quiet, out of things to say.

And it’s late, and Harry probably should be tired, but he’s not, not yet, so the TV’s on and the lights are all bright because Grizz is too nice and everyone thinks that Harry’s suddenly delicate because—

Maybe they’re not wrong.

It’s late, and he’s not tired, and Grizz says quietly, quiet enough for it to be ignored, “We miss you guys around the rink.”

Harry closes his eyes, is about to ignore the words, is so close to ignoring them, but then— “I miss it too.”

He thinks for a moment that there’s something else he probably wants to say, but pushes those words down, and instead turns off the TV and the lights and doesn’t say anything else. Grizz doesn’t say anything either. Harry’s suddenly very tired.

-

He misses his flight home. 

It’s stupid, but instead of driving the rental car back to the airport, he goes into Canton, and ends up parked in the lot outside the rink before he’s even really thought about it.

He’s not sure what he’s doing there, what he’s doing getting out of his car, walking through the parking lot, towards the entrance, thinking about the last time he made this walk with her, their elbows brushing, her hip checking him as he made a stupid joke.

The doors open automatically, and one of the ladies at the front desk smiles over at him, waving brightly, about to pull him in for a conversation he doesn’t want to have right now.

He keeps walking.

And now he’s in that hall that leads to the rink, could turn and look through the windows that face the ice if he wanted to. Will and Gwen could be out there, are probably out there. Or maybe Helena or Elle or Lexie and Jason. It could be any of them

They all have those Arctic Edge Skating Club hoodies. Helena always said that made them a family.

The door opens, and he takes a step back and it’s—

“Harry?” Elle asks softly, tilting her head to the side, staring up at him, a smile almost on her face, but mostly, entirely confusion. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Allie... I thought you guys were on a break.”

He tries to shake off whatever feeling forced him here, forced him back to Canton, back to this rink, this place. “I— we are, we are on a break.”

“Why are you here, then?”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t— “I don’t know.”

Elle blinks over at him. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

-

“You know, she misses you a lot,” Elle says, picking up her slice of avocado toast. “And I’m sure you miss her too.”

He’s not sure he wants to talk about missing her right now, no, not when that’s all he can think about most days. “How are you and Helena?”

Elle snorts softly. “We’re good. We’re really good.”

“I’m really happy for you two,” he says genuinely, and she smiles a soft thanks.

“Yeah, we found a way to make everything work. We talked,” she says pointedly. “Allie says you guys haven’t talked in months.”

Harry inhales deeply, shakily. “We haven’t.”

“She came to visit a couple weeks ago. Said that you guys got into a fight. Said that you guys are taking a year off skating.” She pauses. “She said it was her idea.”

“It was her idea.”

Elle sighs. “When did you both decide that a gold medal was worth all of this?”

“We—” Harry’s words get caught in the back of his throat, mixed in with lies and half-truths. “I don’t think I ever did.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

He swallows, pauses, tries to breathe, tries to think. “I don’t— I don’t know anymore.”

“It wouldn’t be all that hard to fix things.” Harry doesn’t even know where to start with that… fixing things. He doesn’t— “You would just have to talk.”

Elle takes a bite of her toast. He’s quiet. She rolls her eyes. “You two are so stupid,” she finally says, shaking her head and laughing just a little. “You know that, right?”

His mouth opens, and then closes. Elle laughs some more.

-

When he touches down in Connecticut, he has a missed call from her. And he thinks about texting because that’s what she did, but—

God, he just wants to the sound of her voice again. That’s all.

So, he calls.

-

It rings once, twice… 

“Hey,” she says brightly, and he swears he hears her let out a soft exhale. “I just—”

“Do you wanna get coffee sometime?” he cuts in. “You can tell me about Europe, maybe? And I can tell you all about my very exciting summer in West Ham?”

She lets out a laugh, sudden and almost surprised sounding. It makes him smile. “Yeah, Harry. I would love to.”

-

They meet at a coffee shop in downtown West Ham, and she’s already there when he slips in through the door, five minutes earlier than they’d agreed.

When she spots him she stands up, and then her arms are around his neck, and she’s right _there_ and they’re touching, hugging, and his face his pressing into the crook of her neck and he’s just trying to take all of this in before it’s taken from him again. 

“Hi,” she whispers, and it sounds a little watery. He thinks she might be crying. He feels a little like crying too. “I—” she pulls away slowly, leans her head back, wipes at her eyes, “I missed you.”

He rests his hand over top of hers, the pad of his thumb on her cheek, wiping a tear away. “I missed you too, Allie.”

They sit, both leaning a little too far forward, cups of coffee warming their hands. She talks about Europe, fills him in on the places she visited, what she’d done. She mentions the postcards off-handedly, and he thinks about telling her they meant to him. Will, probably. Someday.

Her words fill up the space until they’re all he can see, and she’s bright again, so bright, a bit like before. And he’d forgotten what it was like for her not to just be a memory, faded at the edges and tainted by time. He’d forgotten what it was like to breathe the same air as her, for them to be close enough to touch.

“So, what about you? Tell me about your summer,” she prompts, leaning forward just a little, her chin resting in her hands.

“I…” he thinks, thinks about what he’s done besides missing her and wallowing and wishing and— “I saw Kelly. She wants us to visit her in New York.”

“That’d be nice,” Allie says. “I haven’t seen her in years. Ever since we left for Canton, really. She was always so nice to me back then. Made me forget that we were competitors, you know?”

“That sounds like her.”

“And what about Sarah? She’s what, twelve now? God, that makes me feel old.”

“I’m a year older than you, Pressman,” he says playfully. “How do you think I feel?” And she laughs, her nose scrunching up just a little, a crinkle appearing around her eyes.

They talk until it starts to get dark outside, sharing pastries and sips of drinks. They talk until she looks at the time, surprised, maybe, at how much as passed.

“I should probably get going,” she says, and they stand up together, pushing in their chairs and putting on their coats. He opens the door for her, and she nods a thanks.

“This was really nice,” Allie says firmly, a bit like she’s trying to convince him of it. He wants to tell her that that’s not necessary.

“It was,” he agrees, almost immediately, and she smiles.

They hug again outside of the coffee shop, and he holds her close for a second too long just because he can.

It’s not until she’s slipping away that he notices she’s wearing the pearl earrings. He tries not to read too far into it. 

He fails.

  
-

She texts him a day later a tweet she thought was funny, and he sends back a news article he’d found interesting. Conversation flows easily, and when he calls, just because he thinks he can’t go too long anymore without hearing the sound of her voice, she answers after the first ring.

He thinks that maybe soon they’ll be okay again.

-

They go out to get ice cream even though the weather is starting to shift from fall to winter. They’re the only ones inside the shop, laughing over vanilla cones.

“Do you remember,” she asks in the midst of a fit of giggles, “that time Lynette thought Doug lost us? I was just…” She reaches across the table for his hand, her thumb suddenly on his wrist, his pulse point. The giggles fade. “I kept thinking about that when I was in London. And I wanted to text you then and ask if you remembered, but…”

He inhales. “You could have.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I could have.”

It’s quiet for a moment until he leans forward suddenly to take a bite of her cone, and she gasps dramatically, pulling away from him, saying something about betrayal in between breathy laughs. And he grins, and she grins back, and—

He thinks he missed times like this the most. He missed it being easy, easy for them to talk, to laugh, to smile at each other for no real reason.

Outside, the trees are bare, and the sky is a pale gray. She says something about snow, and he laughs without really thinking.

“We should do this more,” she says lightly, biting the inside of her lip. And he almost thinks she’s nervous, wonders when he lost the ability to immediately read her.

“We really should,” he agrees, grinning, waiting for her to smile back. She does, after a moment, her eyes flitting up and down his face.

It’s like she’s studying him, searching for something, and her smile fading just a little as he leans in even closer, only she’s leaning in too, and he’s about to ask, about to ask if he _can,_ if that’s alright now, after everything, only then—

She takes a step back, barley, and then another, staring down at the ground for a moment. “I just…” she starts, trailing off slowly. She pushes the words away, shaking her head a little. “I’ll see you later, Harry.”

“Yeah,” he says, as she walks away, “I’ll see you later.”

-

Sarah invites Allie to her birthday party without mentioning it to him.

She’s just there when he comes downstairs, standing in his kitchen, talking to his mom animatedly about something he can’t hear.

His breath catches in his throat. He pauses. He closes his eyes, wonders if this is some dream. He walks towards her.

“I tried indoor skiing while I was in Germany,” she says as he approaches.

“And did you like it?” he asks, and she turns to him, a grin blossoming on her face, wide enough that he wonders if it hurts. 

She shrugs, still grinning. “It was okay. You don’t quite get that glide you get in skating. I missed that part.”

He nods, and his mom walks away with a half wave, saying something about welcoming some other guest. Harry wonders if he gets to ask Allie if she misses it now, skating. And he’s about to, really, he is, when she says, “Your mom mentioned that you re-did your room. Can I see it?”

He’s never been able to say no to her.

So his hand loops around her wrist, and suddenly he’s pulling her up the stairs, laughing when she almost trips, her pointing out baby pictures like she didn’t already see them last summer, like it’s all something new.

“Just painted the walls and got a new bed,” he says, sitting down at the edge of the mattress. She looks like she’s about to follow, only she stops for a second, lingering near his desk, staring down and—

Oh. The postcards.

He hears her exhale softly, and she sits down beside him, leaning back until she’s hit the bed. He lays down beside her.

“Why’d you send the postcards to the Hamptons?” he asks quietly, both of them staring up at the ceiling. He feels her shift beside him.

“I didn’t know what else to do with them,” she eventually says, the words coming out slowly, like she’s trying to figure out the answer as she speaks. “You kept them.”

“Of course I did.”

They breathe, their chests rising and falling in time, and he thinks about those moments at competitions, right before the skate would start, them backstage, lining up their breathing, their heartbeats. In those moments, he swore he’d never felt so close to another person.

“I’m sorry that I left,” she breathes out, so soft that he has to strain to hear. He doesn’t think she means it to be that way.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t ask you to stay.”

She shifts again, and suddenly her head is on his chest, her ear to his heartbeat. And he’s playing with a strand of her hair without really thinking about it. He’s missed being close to her like this. 

“I didn’t mean for it to end up like that, Harry,” she finally says. “And I didn’t mean to leave, not really. I just… every single decision I was making was filtered through that _Olympics_ prism, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. I just needed some time.”

He turns his head to stare at her, and she turns too, their eyes meeting. “But we’re okay, now?” he asks, and he’s not sure he can handle any answer but—

“Yeah, we’re okay now.”

-

When they were younger, he would take whatever parts of her he could get, the little pieces left over after everyone else got their turns. It was them in the dark corners of that tiny rink, him saying stupid things over and over just to make her laugh, him watching her across the ice, thinking about what-ifs and other worlds.

It was them backstage after competitions, sitting too close, talking about silver medals. It was them sharing oranges, and him counting the seconds he had left to just be near her.

He was jealous then that everyone else seemed to have more of her than he did. He was jealous, and he was young, and he couldn’t imagine things ever being different, but if he could…

For two months, he had _her._ He had all of her. He had her waking up beside him, her pressing kisses to his neck early in the morning, midway through the day, late at night. And he should’ve asked, he should’ve asked for that to be forever before she ever got the chance to think that she had to leave. 

He should’ve asked.

-

It’s snowing in Greenwich, the first real snow of the year, and he can’t quite figure out how Sarah convinced him to come to the rink with her this early in the morning.

His skates are sitting untied on a bench, waiting for him to get that final push that forces him back on the ice for the first time since things fell apart. And it’s still dark outside, and it’s quiet, everything quiet, the parking lot and the rink both empty. He keeps catching himself staring out windows, out at street lamps and falling snowflakes. It’s like he can’t help it.

If it weren’t so early, he’d text her a picture of the snow, because that’s what they’d done before, in between trips up to the apartment rooftop, him watching as snowflakes got caught in her hair. And he has pictures of that, a million pictures of that, a million pictures of her that he almost deleted right after she left, too many pictures for her to ever really be erased, though.

He reaches into his pocket for his phone. It’s not there. But he needs his fix of her, needs that reminder that once upon a time they really were okay, and that one day they’ll get back to that place, so he calls out to Sarah that he’ll be right back.

The sound of the door closing echoes behind him, and his shoes squeak against the linoleum, and a million different memories all at once come rushing back— that first time at the rink, chasing Allie down the halls, both of them laughing so hard and Cassandra yelling that they should stop, leaning against walls and tying shoelaces and staring out at the rink after a particularly hard day of training, the promise that the ice would still be there tomorrow, waiting for him.

His breath catches in his throat, and he pauses for just a moment.

None of the memories leave him with that deep ache inside his chest that somehow became a fixture in his life months ago. 

He keeps walking.

And when he pushes open the door, the metal cold against his skin, when he reaches forward without really even thinking, when he catches her without knowing it’s _her_ , Allie, leaning into him just barely.

She tilts her head back, stares up at him, something like shock and surprise playing into her smile. He laughs. “You good, Pressman?”

“Yeah,” she breathes out, “yeah, I’m good. Thanks for catching me.”

He doesn’t pause. “Always.” And he’s holding her wrist in one hand, her waist in the other. She makes no move out of his grasp, but he steps back anyway, just barely, and lets go of her wrist. She pushes the door open. “What are you doing here?”

They stand too close on the welcome mat near the front desk now, snowflakes melting into her hair, and Allie shrugs a little. “I just… it’s snowing, and I wanted to skate,” she finally says, blinking up at him. “What about you?”

“Sarah wanted to get in an early practice before the rink started filling up.”

Allie bites down on the edge of her lip, looks contemplative for a moment and almost nervous, her head tilted to the side as she asks, “You have skates with you?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles. “You wanna skate with me?”

-

That waltz is playing, coming from somewhere off in the distance, and her hand is in his, and he’s spinning her around and around, pulling her with him as they glide across the rink, bright and loud and happy. He’s so undeniably happy.

And this is what skating with her had felt like the first time, that first time when it was supposed to mean nothing, when he didn’t know that it was possible for it to be like _this._

He missed it feeling like _this._

As the music fades out, she tilts her head back, and her eyes still remind him of diamonds, of the ocean, a bright, sharp blue that’s so incredibly easy to get lost in. And he can hear his heartbeat, loud in chest, knows that his heart is right there, right on the end of his sleeve, that he’d let her take it and do with it whatever she wanted, that it’s been that way for a long time now, that he can’t imagine that ever changing.

Her eyes flit around his face slowly, carefully, like she’s trying to take something in. And then finally— “Can I…?”

His heart is right on the end of his sleeve. He wants to offer it to her. “Yeah.”

Her lips touch his and everything goes quiet, their noses bumping, his hand pressed against her cheek. It’s light and soft and gentle, and she’s smiling, smiling before he pulls away, smiling after.

She whispers something about _fate,_ and he can’t help but agree.

“Yeah,” he says, “this is how things were always supposed to go.”

-

They’re sitting in the kitchenette. The fluorescents above still hum, just like before, and the room still feels just a little too small. 

“Allie,” he says softly. It’s quiet, and he’s peeling an orange onto a paper towel. It reminds him of being seventeen, of slipping off the ice just to see her, of dreams that feel so far away right now. He thinks of how much he’s grown up. He wonders when exactly this place stopped feeling like home. “It can’t be like before.”

And she’s staring over at him, something so incredibly soft in her eyes. She’s quiet. He thinks he can hear the sound of skates against the ice. “No,” she finally says, “no it can’t.” And then, after more silence, “We’ll be alright.”

Yeah, they’ll be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so.... hope you enjoyed! thank you so much for all your kind words and support! they really do mean the world. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hallieownsme)

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! pls tell me what you think! and hmu on [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/) for fun little fic sneak peaks or just to talk about the society!


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